BL  53  . C7 22  1923 
Crabb,  Cecil  Van  Meter. 
Psychology’s  challenge  to 
Christianity 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/psychologyschallOOcrab 


Psychology’s  Challenge 
to  Christianity 


Rev.  Cecil  V.  Crabb,  M.  A.,  B.  D. 


(Louisville  and  Princeton) 


Pastor  of  First  Presbyterian  Church 

CLARKSDALE,  MISS. 


Published  by 

PRESBYTERIAN  COMMITTEE  OF  PUBLICATION 
Richmond,  Virginia 


COPYRIGHT  1923 

PRESBYTERIAN  COMMITTEE  OF  PUBLICATION 
RICHMOND,  VIRGINIA 


PRINTED  IN  U.  S.  A. 
WHITTET  &  SHEPPERSON 
RICHMOND,  VA, 


{Eo  jWp  ®Iife 
jflarp  Bupree  Crafab 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Demand  for  a  Sound  Psy¬ 
chology  of  Religion  .  7 

II.  The  Rise  of  the  Psychology  of  Re¬ 
ligion  . 31 

III.  Human  Personality .  49 

IV.  Some  Tried  Principles .  79 

V.  The  Feelings  and  The  Will .  94 

VI.  The  New  Psychology .  109 

VII.  The  New  Psychology — Its  Lim¬ 
itations  .  143 

VIII.  Some  Practical  Hints  from  Psy¬ 
chology  .  177 

IX.  The  Challenge  .  190 


Preface 


IN  the  midst  of  the  psychological  and  other 
heresies  of  the  hour  this  book  is  intended 
to  be  a  useful  weapon  for  the  defence  of  the 
Historic  Faith.  Its  aim  is  not  only  to  make 
the  reader  abreast  of  the  latest  thought  along 
these  lines,  but  also  to  give  him  a  greater 
physical,  moral,  and  spiritual  efficiency  in  his 
Christian  life.  It  is  adapted  for  pastors,  for 
religious  workers  in  the  Sunday  School,  in 
the  women’s  circles,  in  young  people’s  work, 
and  for  every  Christian. 


Chapter  I. 


The  Demand  for  a  Sound  Psychology 
of  Religion 

THIS  is  an  age  of  specialization.  The  day 
when  a  man  could  be  proficient  in  any 
given  line  of  human  endeavor  merely 
by  possessing  an  encyclopedic  knowledge  of 
all  the  arts  and  sciences  is  past.  The  price 
of  success  is  the  concentration  of  attention. 
This  age  not  only  demands  an  intimate  ac¬ 
quaintance  with  the  laws  operative  in  any 
particular  line  of  endeavor,  but  also  is  be¬ 
ginning  to  study  the  application  of  modern 
psychology  to  the  given  pursuit.  Hence,  such 
investigations  have  arisen  as  the  Psychology 
of  Efficiency,  the  Psychology  of  Advertising, 
the  Psychology  of  Education.  In  every  line 
of  human  endeavor  where  men  are  dealing, 
not  exclusively  with  material  entities,  but 
also  with  the  human  factor,  they  are  finding 
that  to  be  successful  they  must  be  acquainted 
with  the  fundamental  laws  of  human  per¬ 
sonality.  This  is  a  day  when  we  seek  the 
specialist  in  every  line.  In  medicine,  in  law, 
in  education  the  world  is  calling  for  men 
who  are  specialists  in  all  that  pertains  to 
their  given  work. 

What  is  the  situation  in  this  respect  in  that 
most  vital  activity  of  the  human  spirit,  re¬ 
ligion?  Do  we  demand  high  qualifications  of 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

those  who  shall  work  in  this  sphere?  Must 
the  religious  worker  be  intimately  acquainted 
with  the  laws  that  govern  the  human  soul? 
I  am  sorry  to  state  that  we  make  no  such 
rigid  demands.  In  fact,  until  a  few  years 
ago  there  were  no  educational  qualifications 
at  all  demanded  of  the  lay  worker  along  re¬ 
ligious  lines.  Here  is  one  of  the  most  re¬ 
markable  anomalies  of  the  present  day:  in 
the  most  important  pursuit  in  which  the 
human  spirit  can  engage  the  qualifications 
demanded  of  the  worker  are  decidedly  lower 
than  the  requirements  exacted  in  secular  ac¬ 
tivities.  The  church  has  practically  neglected 
the  laws  of  the  human  soul.  As  T.  W.  Pym 
says  in  Psychology  and  the  Christian  Life, 
“In  such  application  the  Christian  Church  is 
behind-hand.  In  the  industrial  world  the 
new  psychology  is  being  widely  applied  in  a 
practical  way.  Research  into  fatigue  and 
its  causes,  into  the  relation  of  mental  to  phy¬ 
sical  fatigue,  is  resulting  in  many  improve¬ 
ments  in  factory  methods;  motion  study  is 
bringing  further  improvements.,,  We  see 
then  that  the  church  has  largely  neglected  a 
study  of  the  laws  of  the  human  soul.  Surely 
such  negligence  is  inexcusable.  Men  would 
never  think  of  entrusting  the  welfare  of  their 
bodies  to  doctors  who  were  ignorant  of  the 
laws  of  the  human  anatomy.  But  they  com¬ 
mit  the  care  of  their  souls  to  the  guidance  of 
religious  workers  who  ofttimes  are  woe¬ 
fully  ignorant  of  the  laws  of  human  personal¬ 
ity.  The  human  soul  is  a  more  sensitive 

[8] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

organ  than  is  the  body.  Here  a  tactless,  un¬ 
informed  person  with  no  acquaintance  with 
the  laws  of  human  personality  is  in  a  posi¬ 
tion  to  do  untold  harm  to  the  religious  sensi¬ 
bilities  of  the  soul. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  spiritual  and 
mental  equipment  that  should  be  demanded 
of  the  worker  along  religious  lines?  Of 
course,  he  should  be  a  regenerated  person, 
and  should  have  had  some  definite  Christian 
experience.  Then  he  should  be  well  acquaint¬ 
ed  with  the  Bible.  He  should  know  the  terms 
of  God's  message  to  sinful  men.  There  is  no 
place  in  Christian  work  for  the  man  who  has 
no  message  from  above,  nor  for  the  man  who 
has  no  burning  desire  to  save  souls  and  to 
set  up  the  kingdom  in  this  world.  There  are 
certain  fundamentals  in  religious  experience 
and  moral  outlook  that  a  person  should  pos¬ 
sess  before  he  ever  undertakes  any  work  for 
Christ.  But  aside  from  these  evangelistic, 
religious,  and  Biblical  qualifications,  what 
shall  we  say  of  his  mental  equipment?  I  be¬ 
lieve  that  next  to  the  above  qualifications  a 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  human  soul  is 
most  vital.  If  the  religious  worker  desires  to 
work  with  the  human  soul,  he  should  know 
the  laws  that  govern  its  operation.  The  doc¬ 
tor,  before  he  begins  to  operate  on  the  human 
body,  spends  four  or  five  years  in  investiga¬ 
tion  and  study  of  the  laws  of  that  body.  But 
we  allow  workers  with  no  knowledge  of  hu¬ 
man  personality  to  attempt  to  minister  to 
the  moral  and  spiritual  ailments  of  mankind. 

[9] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Surely  the  day  is  near  at  hand  when  the 
church  shall  demand  that  her  workers,  both 
clerical  and  lay,  shall  possess  some  knowledge 
of  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  human  soul, 
to  which  they  bring  such  vital  ministrations. 
We  have  neglected  the  psychology  of  religion 
long  enough.  We  are  paying  for  our  negli¬ 
gence  by  witnessing  a  distressing  amount  of 
inefficiency  in  Sunday  School  work,  in 
evangelism  and  personal  work,  and,  in  fact, 
in  all  lines  of  religious  endeavour.  I  hope 
and  pray  that  a  new  day  is  coming — a  day  in 
which  all  who  essay  to  do  religious  work  of 
any  kind  will  make  a  diligent  study  of  the 
laws  of  psychology  that  govern  the  patient 
whom  they  are  trying  to  treat.  As  Rev.  J.  P. 
Hicks  well  states  in  his  Ten  Lessons  in  Per¬ 
sonal  Evangelism,  “Even  as  the  successful 
teacher  would  not  think  of  permitting  a  year 
to  pass  without  reading  a  good  work  on 
psychology,  so  the  personal  worker  may  pro¬ 
fit  by  the  same  rule.” 

Some  one  may  ask  at  this  point,  “Cannot 
this  necessary  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the 
human  soul  be  obtained  from  the  Bible?”  I 
answer  both,  “Yes”  and  “No.”  The  Bible 
does  tell  clearly  of  man’s  nature  as  a  sinner. 
It  reveals  to  us  what  God  thinks  of  man’s 
moral  and  spiritual  condition.  But  the  Bible 
is  not  a  text  book  on  Psychology  any  more 
than  it  is  on  philosophy,  science,  or  even  on 
theology.  It  is  a  mighty  revelation  of  God’s 
redemptive  processes  in  the  world,  and  it 
touches  on  all  other  sciences — whether  they 

[10] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

be  psychology  or  philosophy — only  so  far  as 
they  affect  its  great  end.  The  Bible  rather 
takes  for  granted  the  great  ultimates — the 
existence  of  God,  the  existence  of  the  human 
soul,  the  faculties  and  laws  of  operation  of 
the  ego.  Nowhere  will  you  find  in  the  pages 
of  the  Bible  any  elaborate  philosophical  dem¬ 
onstration  of  the  existence  of  God.  Nowhere 
will  you  find  any  subtle  argument  to  prove 
that  man  has  a  soul.  Nowhere  will  you  find 
any  scientific  discussion  of  the  laws  of  the 
human  personality.  These  themes  all  belong 
to  the  sphere  of  natural  revelation ;  and  they 
are  not  discussed  elaborately  in  the  great 
supernatural  revelation  of  redemption.  We 
are  supposed  to  have  settled  these  matters 
as  to  the  existence  of  God,  the  fact  of  the 
human  soul  before  we  come  to  a  study  of  the 
Bible.  These  are  the  foundation  stones  on 
which  the  grand  Biblical  structure  of  super¬ 
natural  religion  is  built.  But  the  great  trou¬ 
ble  today  is  that  many  Christian  workers 
have  never  properly  placed  some  of  the 
great  foundation  stones — such,  for  example, 
as  the  nature  of  the  human  ego  and  its  laws — 
and  when  they  try  to  build  a  superstructure 
of  religion  in  their  own  and  other  people’s 
lives,  they  find  that  the  building  is  defective. 
The  trouble  is  a  faulty  foundation.  Before 
we  begin  our  building  of  Christian  character, 
let  us  be  sure  that  some  of  our  foundation 
stones  are  not  cracked.  Let  us  remember 
that  the  Revelation  in  the  Bible  takes  for 
granted  the  great  ultimates  of  natural  reli- 
[11] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

gion.  There  are  some  presuppositions  which 
we  may  bring  to  a  study  of  the  Bible  which 
will  make  it  very  difficult  for  us  to  obtain 
much  help  from  its  supernatural  message. 

Now,  since  God  is  the  author  both  of  the 
Bible  and  of  the  human  soul,  then  we  need 
have  no  fear  that  there  will  be  any  contradic¬ 
tion  between  the  two.  God  is  not  the  creator 
of  confusion  but  of  harmony.  Indeed,  a  care¬ 
ful  study  of  the  human  personality  will  only 
increase  our  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  our 
God,  as  this  is  reflected  in  that  most  wonder¬ 
ful  of  all  His  creations,  the  being  created  in 
His  own  image,  man.  Let  us  approach  a 
study  of  the  psychology  of  religion  without  a 
fear  that  our  faith  will  be  shaken,  but  with 
a  firm  conviction  that  it  will  be  strengthened, 
that  our  apprehension  of  the  Glory  of  our 
Creator  will  be  heightened,  that  our  enjoy¬ 
ment  of  Christianity  will  be  increased,  and 
that  our  efficiency  as  a  worker  for  Christ 
will  be  augmented. 

With  these  introductory  remarks  I  want 
to  note  a  little  more  in  detail  the  value  of  a 
study  of  psychology  for  the  Christian.  We 
will  divide  our  discussion  into  four  heads. 


[12] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


(I.) 

VALUE  OF  THE  STUDY  TO  THE 
SUNDAY  SCHOOL  WORKER 

The  superintendent,  departmental  super¬ 
intendent,  Sunday  School  teacher,  and  those 
who  work  in  any  capacity  about  the  school 
are  engaged  in  a  work  of  transcendent  im¬ 
portance.  They  have  to  do  with  the  child 
at  the  most  critical  period  of  its  life.  They 
deal  with  the  child  at  the  plastic  age  when 
the  grooves  of  life-habits  are  being  cut  in 
the  nervous  system,  when  its  philosophy  of 
life  or  great  mental  complexes  are  being 
formed.  The  Sunday  School  directs  the  re¬ 
ligious  training  of  the  child  at  that  most 
critical  period  of  its  life,  the  adolescent, 
when  there  is  the  birth  of  the  new  con¬ 
sciousness.  Surely  under  these  conditions  a 
knowledge  of  the  human  soul  is  essential. 
The  wise  teacher  should  not  only  know  the 
general  laws  of  human  psychology,  but 
should  know  something  of  child  psychology 
and  of  the  meaning  of  adolescence.  Because 
Sunday  School  teachers  have  been  ignorant 
of  psychology  and  of  the  very  patient  with 
whom  they  had  to  deal  every  Sunday,  there 
has  been  in  the  past  lamentable  inefficiency 
in  Sunday  School  work.  Let  us  remember 
that  the  foundation  to  all  modern,  efficient, 
up-to-date  Sunday  School  work  is  a  sound 
psychology  of  religion.  A  sane  psychology 

[13] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

is  at  the  basis  of  all  proper  grading  in  the 
Sunday  School,  all  efficient  departmental 
work,  all  selection  of  proper  literature,  the 
use  of  the  right  songs  in  the  different  depart¬ 
ments,  the  ability  to  present  Bible  truths  at¬ 
tractively  so  that  pupils  of  different  ages 
will  be  interested  and  held  in  the  school, 
all  the  doctrinal  work  in  the  Sunday  School 
in  the  form  of  catechisms.  All  of  these  prob¬ 
lems  go  back  at  the  last  for  solution  to  a 
sound  psychology  of  religion.  We  begin  to 
see  now  why  a  wise  Sunday  School  teacher 
should  be  acquainted  with  the  laws  of  the 
human  soul.  The  time  has  come  when  he 
or  she  cannot  do  efficient  Sunday  School 
work  and  remain  ignorant  of  the  funda¬ 
mental  laws  of  personality.  The  teacher  who 
persists  in  ignoring  the  study  of  the  human 
soul  will  awake  some  day  to  find  that  he  is 
lamentably  behind  the  times. 

Because  the  psychology  of  religion  has 
been  neglected  in  the  past  in  Sunday  School 
work,  our  schools  have  been  poorly  graded 
and  unattractively  handled.  We  have  had 
to  witness  the  distressing  sight  of  seeing 
children  become  uninterested  in  the  Sunday 
School  and  in  the  Bible,  and  because  of  this 
lack  of  interest  drift  out  into  the  world.  We 
have  seen  these  same  children  go  to  High 
School  and  later  to  college,  carrying  with 
them  a  distaste  for  all  Sunday  School  work 
and  a  prejudice  against  the  Bible.  We  have 
observed  these  boys  and  girls  later,  because 
they  were  not  properly  grounded  and  forti- 

[14] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

fied  in  the  faith,  yield  to  the  assaults  of 
naturalistic  evolution  and  higher  criticism, 
and  sooner  or  later  drift  into  infidelity.  Who 
knows  but  what  if  Sunday  School  work  and 
Bible  study  had  been  made  attractive  to  them 
in  their  early  days,  they  would  have  grown 
up  with  a  love  for  Bible  work  instead  of 
with  a  prejudice  against  it!  A  sound  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion  might  have  saved  the  day. 


(II.) 

IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  STUDY  TO  THE 
EVANGELIST  AND  PERSONAL 
WORKER 

Evangelism  is  the  great  business  of  the 
church.  The  evangelist  not  only  deals  with 
the  human  soul  in  regard  to  its  most  vital 
concern,  religion,  but  also  touches  it  at  the 
most  critical  stage  of  the  whole  religious 
process,  the  birth  of  the  new  life  in  the  soul. 
Under  these  conditions  he  should  be  an  ex¬ 
pert  in  his  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  per¬ 
sonality.  Wonderful  are  his  opportunities 
for  good  or  evil.  He  faces  an  audience 
when  their  emotions  are  highly  aroused  and 
by  the  power  of  suggestion  can  be  directed 
either  in  sane  or  extravagant  channels,  when 
the  powers  of  judgment  and  inhibition  on  the 
part  of  the  crowd  are  at  a  low  ebb,  when 
the  laws  of  herd  or  crowd  psychology  are 
highly  operative.  We  thus  see  that  the 

[15] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

evangelist  has  most  serious  responsibilities 
imposed  upon  him.  Because  of  the  condition 
of  the  crowd,  it  is  largely  at  his  control.  He 
can  either  lead  them  to  God,  to  wise  Chris¬ 
tian  choices,  and  to  a  normal  Christian  life; 
or  by  abusing  his  high  position,  he  can  lead 
them  into  the  strange  by-paths  of  extrava¬ 
gant  emotionalism.  Surely  of  all  persons  in 
the  work  of  religion,  the  evangelist  should 
be  acquainted  with  the  laws  of  the  human 
soul.  To  say  that  he  can  be  a  sane  evangelist 
and  know  nothing  of  the  laws  of  psychology 
would  be  just  as  foolish  as  to  say  that  it 
makes  very  little  difference  whether  the 
doctor  who  is  present  at  the  birth  of  a  baby 
and  watches  it  during  its  early  days  knew 
anything  of  the  laws  of  medicine  and  of 
anatomy.  The  position  of  the  evangelist  in 
the  religious  life  is  comparable  to  that  of 
the  doctor  who  brings  a  child  into  the  world. 
Both  have  a  perilous  responsibility.  Both 
should  be  experts  in  their  line.  I  contend 
that  a  sane,  helpful  evangelism  is  founded 
on  a  proper  knowledge  of  the  psychology  of 
religion. 

Such  are  the  solemn  responsibilities  and 
such  the  much  needed  training  of  a  success¬ 
ful,  safe  evangelist.  Do  we  find  that  all 
evangelists  possess  this  needed  training?  We 
all  know  that  this  is  not  the  case.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  queer  notion  prevails  that 
whereas  a  man  should  have  technical  train¬ 
ing  to  do  pastoral  work,  yet  that  a  man 
with  little  or  no  theological  equipment  can 

[16] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

easily  become  an  evangelist.  Indeed  many 
would  seem  to  hold  that  scientific  training  is 
a  handicap  to  an  evangelist,  and  that  the  less 
he  knows  of  psychology  and  theology,  the 
more  efficient  and  successful  he  will  be.  This 
situation  has  brought  about  a  condition  in 
which  the  evangelistic  field  is  more  open 
than  any  other  sphere  of  Christian  work  to 
the  mountebank  and  the  charlatan.  The 
evangelist  gets  the  people  into  an  emotional 
condition  where  he  can  easily  abuse  his  high 
prerogative.  The  crying  call  of  the  hour  is 
for  a  sane  evangelism.  We  need  more  sane, 
educated,  conscientious  men  in  evangelism, 
who  have  not  only  hearts  on  fire  for  the  souls 
of  men ;  but  who  have  an  expert  knowledge 
both  of  theology,  the  science  of  God,  and  of 
psychology,  the  science  of  the  human  soul. 
I  firmly  believe  that  of  all  fields  where  a 
sane  psychology  of  religion  is  needed,  that 
the  evangelistic  demands  such  knowledge 
most  of  all. 

Then  I  would  note,  under  this  head,  that 
in  order  properly  to  do  personal  work  we 
need  to  know  the  laws  of  the  human  soul. 
A  standardized  method  of  evangelism  and 
personal  work  has  abounded,  whereas  we 
need  a  specific,  personal,  man-to-man  method 
of  approach.  No  traveling  man  would  try 
to  sell  goods  by  a  standardized  method  of  ap¬ 
proach.  He  studies  each  man  individually. 
He  must  know  something,  at  least  in  a  prac¬ 
tical  way,  of  the  laws  that  govern  human 
personality.  Surely  the  personal  worker  in 

[17] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

this  greater  work  of  winning  men  to  Christ 
should  not  lag  behind  the  efficient  salesman 
in  his  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  human 
soul.  As  Hicks  says  in  Ten  Lessons  in  Per¬ 
sonal  Evangelism,  “There  is  an  approach  to 
each  individual.”  In  the  past,  too  much  has 
it  been  assumed  that  all  people  are  born  into 
the  kingdom  alike  by  the  storm  and  stress 
method.  The  more  calm  and  normal  method 
of  gradual  growth  through  the  Spirit  into 
the  kingdom  has  been  overlooked.  I  hope 
now  we  begin  to  see  that  many  of  the  prob¬ 
lems  of  evangelism  and  personal  work  are 
psychological  questions ;  and  that  no  man  can 
be  a  sane,  wholesome  evangelist  or  personal 
worker  without  some  grasp  on  the  funda¬ 
mental  laws  of  the  human  soul. 

(HI.) 

VALUE  OF  THE  STUDY  FOR  AN 
ADEQUATE  DEFENCE  OF 
THE  FAITH 

This  is  a  day  when  the  science  of  apolo¬ 
getics,  or  a  proper  defence  of  the  Christian 
Religion,  is  very  important.  Like  our  fore¬ 
fathers  in  the  first  centuries  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  era,  we  are  again  called  on  to  defend 
the  historic  faith.  The  issue  of  the  struggle 
is  clearly  drawn.  It  is  supernaturalism 
against  naturalism ;  progressive  evolution  of 
humanity  over  against  the  old  doctrine  of 
salvation  through  divine  Grace.  This  is  no 

[18] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

arid  academic  question  like  the  debates  of 
the  schoolmen  as  to  how  many  angels  could 
dance  on  the  point  of  a  needle.  It  is  no 
theological  logomachy  that  can  be  confined 
within  the  cloistered  walls  of  some  theolo¬ 
gical  seminary.  It  is  a  vital,  every-day  issue 
that  affects  the  personal,  religious  life  of 
every  Christian,  whether  he  be  a  minister 
or  a  layman.  This  is  no  narrow  battle  line ; 
but  a  mighty  front  that  like  the  Hindenburg 
line  during  the  war  stretches  over  a  whole 
continent  and  even  further.  It  extends  from 
our  great  theological  seminaries  to  our  church 
courts,  out  into  our  individual  churches,  to  the 
mission  fields,  to  our  colleges  and  even  to  our 
high  school  class  rooms  and  right  into  the 
homes  of  every  Christian.  Now  in  this  battle 
of  liberalism  against  the  historic  faith  each 
Christian  should  do  his  part.  It  cannot  be 
won  by  the  efforts  of  the  leaders  alone,  any 
more  than  victory  in  the  great  war  could 
have  been  achieved  through  the  purely  in¬ 
dividual  efforts  of  General  Foch  or  General 
Pershing.  Furthermore,  in  this  great  battle 
of  the  ages,  there  is  a  need  for  trained  sol¬ 
diers  both  in  the  ranks  of  the  clergy  and 
of  the  laity.  Mere  enthusiasm  and  zeal  will 
not  conquer  the  powers  of  liberalism  any 
more  than  good  intentions  alone  would  de¬ 
feat  the  Kaiser.  It  took  patriotism  plus 
skill  and  money  and  ships  to  win  that  war; 
and  it  is  going  to  take  piety  plus  information 
and  hard  study  and  individual  training  in  the 
ranks  to  win  the  battle  for  the  old  faith.  In 
[19] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

this  great  war  for  orthodoxy  we  need  care¬ 
ful  study  in  order  that  we  may  be  properly 
fortified  as  to  our  own  doctrinal  position  and 
in  order  further  that  we  may  be  able  to  de¬ 
tect  the  weak  points  in  the  line  of  the  enemy. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  battle  for  the  historic 
faith  will  ever  be  won  until  both  clergy  and 
laity  are  clearly  informed  as  to  the  true  issue 
that  is  at  stake,  and  until  they  have  that  pro¬ 
per  apologetic  training  in  the  fundamentals 
of  their  own  faith  that  will  enable  them,  not 
only  to  stand  firmly  but  also  to  advance  into 
the  ranks  of  the  enemy. 

But  some  one  will  ask,  “What  has  all  of 
this  to  do  with  the  Psychology  of  religion?” 
I  would  answer,  that  the  battle  starts  right 
here.  It  is  the  acceptance  of  a  faulty  psychol¬ 
ogy  of  religion  that  is  the  first  step  down¬ 
ward  on  the  slippery  path  of  heresy.  When 
Satan  is  making  his  assaults  on  the  line  of 
orthodoxy,  he  first  of  all  attacks  the  line  that 
defends  a  sound  psychology  of  religion.  When 
he  would  conquer  the  citadel  of  the  old  faith, 
he  first  tries  to  storm  the  lines  that  hold  the 
fundamental  truths  that  man  has  a  soul, 
that  this  personality  is  created  by  God  and 
in  His  image,  that  it  is  free  and  responsible. 
When  that  line  falls,  then  it  is  comparatively 
easy  for  him  to  conquer  the  other  defences 
that  uphold  the  doctrines  of  supernatural 
salvation — the  deity  and  atonement  of 
Christ,  and  the  work  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
What  think  ye  of  man?  Has  he  a  soul  to 
be  saved,  one  created  in  the  image  of  God? 

[20] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Is  he  born  into  the  world  innocent,  perfectly 
able  in  his  own  strength  to  choose  the  higher 
instincts  of  altruism  and  sympathy  that  lie 
dormant  within  him?  Or  is  he  guilty,  de¬ 
praved,  unable  to  save  himself,  and  in  dire 
need  of  divine  Grace?  If  man  has  no  soul 
worthy  to  be  saved,  or  if  he  is  not  depraved, 
then  there  is  no  necessity  for  the  doctrine 
of  the  atonement,  of  the  incarnation,  or  of 
the  work  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  first  heresy 
then  is  in  regard  to  the  Psychology  of  re¬ 
ligion.  Men,  first  of  all,  get  off  the  track 
of  orthodoxy  in  regard  to  the  nature  of  man ; 
and  having  left  the  line  of  conservatism 
here,  they  inevitably  and  logically  go  astray 
as  to  the  nature  of  God,  as  to  the  person  of 
Christ,  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  atonement, 
and  as  to  the  whole  conception  of  salvation. 
Christian  doctrine  is  a  closely-knit  concep¬ 
tion,  and  when  one  part  of  the  system  is 
vitiated,  then  the  whole  structure  is  weak¬ 
ened. 

For  a  long  time  the  rank  and  file  of  Chris¬ 
tians  held  that  the  study  of  psychology  was 
of  no  import  to  them.  It  smacked  too  much 
of  metaphysics  and  of  the  schools.  In  like 
manner  they  had  said  in  the  past  that  the 
Higher  Criticism  was  an  academic  matter 
that  was  confined  within  the  four  walls  of  a 
theological  seminary,  until  they  found  one 
day  that  it  was  cropping  out  in  the  High 
School  histories,  in  the  standard  encyclo¬ 
pedias,  and  in  some  of  our  Sunday  School 
literature.  Then  they  awoke  to  the  nature 

[21] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

of  the  crisis  and  saw  that  it  behooved  them — 
for  the  sake  of  their  children  at  least — to  be¬ 
come  informed  on  this  matter  of  Higher 
Criticism.  The  subject  had  invaded  their 
own  homes,  had  awakened  them  from  their 
doctrinal  lethargy,  and  had  forced  them  to 
become  interested. 

So  it  will  be  with  the  psychology  of  re¬ 
ligion.  The  day  has  passed  when  the  Chris¬ 
tian  layman  can  be  indifferent  to  the  kind  of 
psychology  that  is  being  taught  to  his  chil¬ 
dren  in  the  high  schools  and  colleges  of  the 
land.  A  great  deal  of  the  current  psychol¬ 
ogy,  as  will  be  pointed  out  later,  leaves  no 
foundation  on  which  a  Christian  faith  can 
be  built.  When  a  boy  or  a  girl  goes  out 
into  the  world,  it  is  very  essential  that  we 
know  his  or  her  views  as  to  the  nature  of 
his  or  her  soul  and  as  to  the  powers  of  that 
soul.  A  man’s  attitude  toward  his  own  per¬ 
sonality  is  basic  to  all  religion  and  morality. 
The  philosophy  of  life  of  any  man  is  most 
essential.  Before  I  discuss  any  vital  ques¬ 
tion  with  any  man  I  would  like,  first  of  all, 
to  know  what  that  man’s  philosophy  of  life  is 
and  especially  what  his  attitude  to  his  own 
soul  is.  The  views  of  men  are  made  almost 
entirely  by  their  private  philosophies  of  life. 
People  are  pessimists  or  optimists,  material¬ 
ists  or  idealists,  Christian  Scientists  or  Cal¬ 
vinists  not  so  much  because  of  the  given 
facts  that  are  presented  to  them  but  be¬ 
cause  of  an  underlying  philosophy  of  life 
that  colours  and  interprets  these  facts  and 

[22] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

forces  experience  to  fit  into  the  private  mould 
of  their  personal  platform.  As  Swift  has 
well  said  in  Psychology  and  The  Day’s  Work, 
“The  related  experiences  of  an  individual  be¬ 
come  organized  into  a  system  of  ideas  that 
decide  his  outlook  and  opinions  in  matters 
upon  which  the  experiences  have  any  bear¬ 
ing.  These  systems  of  thought  have  been 
called  mental  complexes.”  We  see  then  that 
it  is  very  important  to  get  right  mental  com¬ 
plexes  into  the  mind  of  the  Christian.  Be¬ 
fore  we  could  possibly  get  the  truth  into 
some  minds,  it  would  be  necessary,  first  of 
all,  to  have  a  kind  of  mental  house-cleaning 
and  get  rid  of  some  false  mental  complexes. 
As  long  as  the  Christian  Scientist  elects  to 
stand  upon  his  peculiar  mental  platform  re¬ 
garding  matter  and  the  human  soul,  it  would 
be  a  fruitless  undertaking  to  try  to  get  into 
his  mind  the  truths  of  High  Calvinism. 
There  are  some  philosophies  of  life  that 
positively  will  not  serve  as  an  intellectual 
foundation  for  Christian  doctrine.  They  are 
too  rickety.  I  had  a  Seminary  friend  who 
held  the  peculiar  materialistic  view  that  a 
man’s  conduct  is  determined  absolutely  by 
the  arrangement  of  the  nerve  cells  in  his 
brain.  As  long  as  he  elected  to  stand  upon 
such  a  psychological  platform,  it  was  a 
hopeless  task  to  get  him  to  accept  proper 
views  as  to  a  man’s  individual  responsibility 
to  Almighty  God,  as  to  faith,  repentence,  and 
salvation  in  general. 

[23] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Then  a  proper  understanding  of  the  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion  is  a  good  protection 
against  many  of  the  “isms”  and  “schisms” 
of  the  day.  One  of  the  most  distressing 
sights  of  the  times  is  to  see  supposedly 
Christian  people  drifting  into  Christian 
Science,  Mental  Healing,  Spiritualism  and 
other  false  cults.  As  we  hope  to  show  later, 
in  many  cases  a  faulty  psychology  of  religion 
was  responsible  for  the  lapse.  Their  faith 
was  not  properly  anchored  to  the  great  doc¬ 
trinal  truths  of  the  Bible.  It  was  not  a 
thought-out  religion,  but  was  founded  on 
empty  emotionalism.  Like  the  man  of  whom 
Christ  spoke,  they  built  their  religious  struc¬ 
ture  on  the  sand  of  empty  emotionalism ;  and 
the  rains  of  error  descended,  and  the  floods 
of  false  suggestions  came,  and  the  winds  of 
heresy  blew,  and  beat  upon  that  house,  and 
it  fell.  Now  in  a  study  of  the  psychology  of 
religion  we  are  in  position  to  understand 
and  to  correct  many  of  the  extravagancies 
of  modern  religious  life.  We  can  interpret 
and  understand  how  to  apply  the  proper  cor¬ 
rective  to  the  wild  emotional  orgies  of  the 
religion  of  some  of  the  negroes.  We  can 
understand  more  clearly  other  neurotic  out¬ 
bursts  and  heresies  that  have  arisen  in  the 
history  of  Christianity;  and  we  can  know 
all  the  better  how  to  avoid  these  pitfalls  in 
our  own  religious  life.  All  of  these  matters 
are  problems  that  concern  the  psychology  of 
religion. 


[24] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


(IV.) 

VALUE  OF  THE  STUDY  AS  A  STIMULUS 

TO  DEEPEN  OUR  APPREHENSION 
OF  CHRISTIANITY 

One  of  the  dangers  incident  to  the  orthodox 
position  is  that  it  will  land  us  in  arid  intel- 
lectualism.  From  the  very  nature  of  the 
case,  because  the  great  doctrinal  positions 
have  been  formulated  by  the  Fathers  of  old, 
the  young  Christian  is  prone  to  accept  in  a 
second-hand  sort  of  a  manner  these  doctrinal 
positions  without  any  original  investigation 
on  his  part.  Henceforth  and  forever  he  be¬ 
comes  a  conventional,  second-hand  thinker 
who  goes  to  the  fountain  of  tradition  for  all 
of  his  inspiration  and  who  lacks  entirely 
the  spirit  of  investigation  and  research.  He 
will  traverse  the  old  paths  of  the  past;  and 
they  have  been  travelled  so  long  that  they 
have  become  hard  and  beaten  and  never  yield 
to  any  creative  thought.  Hence  liberalism 
often  has  more  freshness  and  spontaneity 
and  stimulus  about  it  than  has  orthodoxy. 
In  a  conversation  with  the  late  Dr.  Warfield, 
of  Princeton  Seminary,  he  admitted  to  me 
that  he  read  largely  only  the  books  of  liberal¬ 
ism,  for  he  had  clearly  in  his  mind  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  conservative  side  and  needed  lit¬ 
tle  additional  study  along  those  lines.  I  sub¬ 
mit  this  question,  “Is  it  a  healthy  condition 
when  we  have  to  go  to  liberalism  to  get  our 

[25] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

spontaneity,  our  inspiration  and  our  stimulus 
to  creative  thinking?  Is  orthodoxy  to  be 
bankrupt  in  respect  to  all  that  is  buoyant  and 
fresh  and  creative?” 

One  characteristic  of  American  religious 
life  today  is  the  lack  of  creative  thought. 
The  American  pulpit  does  not  seem  to  grap¬ 
ple  with  the  eternal  realities  as  it  should. 
In  many  of  our  religious  discussions  there 
is  much  that  is  orthodox  and  true — perfectly 
true — but  perfectly  commonplace,  and  with¬ 
out  a  touch  of  novelty,  originality,  or  sug¬ 
gestiveness.  In  current  religious  thought  we 
miss  anything  that  is  intellectually  stimulat¬ 
ing. 

How  few  people  we  meet  elicit  any  original 
thoughts  from  us,  or  inspire  us  to  freshness 
and  spontaneity!  I  believe,  however,  that 
we  can  all  be  more  suggestive  and  stimulat¬ 
ing  in  our  thinking,  if  we  will  only  strive  to 
that  end.  What  is  the  secret  of  suggestive 
thinking?  It  is  to  receive  our  thoughts  not 
in  any  second-hand  sort  of  manner,  but  at 
first-hand.  No  second-hand  thinker  can 
possess  a  spark  of  originality  or  intellectual 
stimulus.  The  recipe  for  suggestiveness  is 
to  quit  second-hand  thinking,  and  to  launch 
out  into  a  fundamental,  first-hand  investiga¬ 
tion  of  the  essentials  of  life.  We  must  first 
of  all  drink  at  the  eternal  springs  of  thought 
ourselves,  if  the  rivers  of  spontaneity  and 
suggestiveness  are  to  flow  from  us. 


[26] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

The  problem  then  resolves  itself  into  this, 
“How  can  a  man  be  orthodox  and  yet  con¬ 
tinue  to  be  fresh  and  stimulating?”  We 
want  to  remain  on  the  paths  of  orthodoxy. 
We  are  not  willing  to  stray  out  on  the  by¬ 
paths  of  liberalism,  even  to  secure  a  few 
novel,  bizarre  nuggets  of  original  thought 
that  we  may  pick  up  by  the  way.  My  an¬ 
swer  would  be,  “Go  back  to  the  original 
sources  in  your  investigation  of  the  subject 
at  hand.  Think  out  for  yourself  the  great 
problems  of  life  and  religion.  Cease  all  sec¬ 
ond-hand  thinking.”  Herein  lies  the  value 
of  a  study  of  the  psychology  of  religion.  We 
are  tracing  problems  right  back  to  their 
source.  We  are  dealing  with  first-hand  reali¬ 
ties.  We  are  studying  the  very  basic,  essen¬ 
tial  problems  of  our  being.  The  value  of 
the  study  of  religious  psychology  is  that 
each  Christian  has  just  as  much  right  as  any 
other  to  investigate  for  himself  and  to  come 
to  his  own  conclusions.  I  know  of  nothing 
that  will  so  give  him  a  new  intellectual  and 
spiritual  vision  as  a  judicious  study  of  the 
psychology  of  religion.  If  more  of  our  think¬ 
ers  would  study  psychology  and  philosophy, 
there  would  be  more  of  an  intellectual  stimu¬ 
lus  and  freshness  in  their  utterances.  No 
study  is  more  stimulating,  more  suggestive 
of  new  thoughts  than  the  psychology  of 
religion. 

Finally,  this  study  will  enable  us  to  sound 
in  a  deeper  manner  the  richer  veins  of  faith, 
peace,  and  power  in  our  blessed  religion. 

[27] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Most  Christians  do  not  claim  their  full  heri¬ 
tage  of  peace  and  joy  and  power  in  the  Holy 
Ghost.  We  all  live  below  par  spiritually.  I 
firmly  believe  that  a  study  of  a  sane  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion  will  enable  us  to  claim 
more  fully  our  full  heritage  of  power  and 
peace  in  Christianity. 

Why  do  heresies  arise?  Is  it  not  because 
Christians  have  neglected  some  fundamental 
aspect  of  their  religion — and  a  heresy  has 
sprung  up  properly  to  accentuate  this  neg¬ 
lected  doctrine?  The  Christian  world  is 
largely  neglecting  to  emphasize  the  immense 
psychic  power  in  the  ordinary  peace,  faith, 
and  joy  of  the  Christian  life — and  hence 
Christian  Science  is  flourishing  today.  Be¬ 
cause  these  qualities  are  so  emphasized  by 
heretical  cults,  we  Christians  lean  backward, 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  such  things 
and  hence  we  fail  to  live  up  to  our  full  heri¬ 
tage.  If  the  member  of  some  false  cult  gets 
sick,  all  of  the  devotees  of  the  body  will  avail 
themselves  of  all  the  faith,  prayer,  and  hope 
at  their  disposal  for  the  restoration  of  the 
sick.  You  let  a  Christian  become  ill,  and  we 
not  only  do  not  avail  ourselves  of  the  normal 
power  of  Christian  faith  and  optimism  but 
we  even  forget  to  pray  for  the  sick  one.  We 
consign  the  sick  to  Providence  and  natural 
causes — and  go  on  about  our  business. 

Now  I  claim  that  the  Christian  Scientists 
and  Faith  Healers  have  no  monopoly  on  the 
psychic  power  of  Christian  faith  and  joy.  I 

[28] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

hope  that  a  study  of  the  Psychology  of  Re¬ 
ligion  will  show  us  how  to  avail  ourselves 
of  our  full  heritage  along  these  lines.  In 
the  chapters  on  The  New  Psychology  I  will 
discuss  this  whole  matter  more  in  detail.  I 
hope  that  this  study  will  be  the  means  of 
opening  up  whole  avenues  of  power  in  the 
Christian  life  that  you  have  never  known 
before.  Out  in  the  oil  fields  the  companies 
will  often  deepen  an  old  well;  and  thereby 
reach  new  sands  and  obtain  a  fresh  “gusher.” 
Now  I  firmly  believe  that  the  ordinary  Chris¬ 
tian  needs  to  deepen  the  wells  of  his  Chris¬ 
tian  experience;  to  dig  down  through  the 
strata  of  common-place,  conventional  re¬ 
ligion  to  new  sands  where  he  will  find  fresh 
streams  of  peace,  faith,  and  power.  We  are 
not  living  up  to  our  full  possibilities  as  Chris¬ 
tians.  We  have  left  the  wonderful  psychic 
qualities  of  faith  and  optimism  entirely  in 
the  hands  of  the  faith  healer  and  Christian 
Scientist.  The  Church  has  decided  that  she 
will  have  absolutely  nothing  to  do  with  such 
things.  As  a  result  we  have  deprived  our¬ 
selves  of  rich  mines  of  power  and  strength. 

Such  is  the  challenge  that  modern  psy¬ 
chology  makes  to  Christianity.  It  is  both 
destructive  and  constructive.  On  the  one 
hand,  many  modern  psychological  doctrines 
tend  to  undermine  the  very  foundations  on 
which  the  superstructure  of  a  sound  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  is  built.  The  Christian  of  today 
must  be  able  to  defend  the  basic  pillars  that 
uphold  his  faith.  The  crucial  battles  of 

[29] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

present-day  religion  are  being  fought  out 
not  on  the  fields  of  theology,  historical  and 
literary  criticism,  nor  on  that  theatre  where 
science  and  theology  are  supposed  to  be  in 
eternal  warfare,  but  in  the  sphere  of  the 
psychology  of  religion.  Then,  on  the  con¬ 
structive  side,  modern  psychology  hurls  the 
challenge  to  Christianity  to  set  her  own  house 
in  order.  There  is  no  denying  the  fact  that 
the  modern  mind  demands  more  peace,  poise, 
and  power  both  physical  and  spiritual  than 
traditional,  scholastic,  and  conventional 
Christianity  is  able  to  give.  How  shall  she 
answer  the  challenge?  The  answer  is  to  be 
found  in  a  sound  psychology  of  religion. 


[30] 


Chapter  II. 


The  Rise  of  the  Psychology  of  Religion 

IN’  this  chapter  I  wish  to  discuss  briefly  the 
relation  that  in  general  has  existed  be¬ 
tween  psychology  and  religion  during  the 
past  one  hundred  years.  I  desire  to  sketch 
the  two  currents  of  thought  as  they  lead  up 
to  and  merge  in  the  comparatively  recent 
science  of  the  Psychology  of  Religion.  As 
has  been  pointed  out,  the  attitude  of  psy¬ 
chology  in  general  to  the  whole  system  of 
theology  is  very  fundamental  and  basic.  A 
sound  theory  of  the  human  mind  makes  pos¬ 
sible  an  enduring  theology;  while  a  false 
doctrine  of  the  soul  and  of  its  function  im¬ 
perils  the  very  existence  of  the  Christian 
system,  or,  in  fact,  of  any  religion  that  is 
worthy  of  the  name. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  note  the  attitude 
of  the  older  psychologists  towards  religion. 
By  these  I  mean  the  school  of  Natural 
Realists  or  Common  Sense  Psychologists 
made  up  of  such  men  as  Thos.  Reid,  Wm. 
Hamilton,  Noah  Porter,  and  James  McCosh. 
The  outstanding  feature  of  the  older  psy¬ 
chologists  that  is  of  interest  to  the  religious 
worker  is  that  they  believed  in  the  doctrine 
of  the  soul,  and  constructed  their  psycholo¬ 
gical  tenets  on  the  “common  sense”  testimony 
of  consciousness  and  on  the  normal  conscious 

[31] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

life  of  the  ego.  The  psychological  position 
of  these  men  was  decidedly  favorable  to 
Christianity.  Upon  its  tenets  the  principal 
beliefs  of  orthodox  religion  could  be  easily 
constructed.  As  Baldwin  points  out  in  his 
History  of  Psychology,  the  theological  in¬ 
terest  in  natural  realism  and  in  the  philos¬ 
ophy  of  common  sense  had  much  to  do  with 
their  currency.  Dogmatic  spiritualism  be¬ 
came  the  theory  of  the  soul  that  was  taught 
by  Christian  theologians.  In  most  of  our 
church  colleges  and  theological  seminaries 
the  psychological  tenets  of  this  school  were 
largely  held  up  until  a  few  years  ago;  and 
in  our  orthodox  seminaries  today,  Natural 
Realism  is  the  current  psychology.  This  con¬ 
dition  is  not  accidental,  but  has  resulted  be¬ 
cause  in  the  psychology  of  Common  Sense 
Christian  leaders  have  found  the  system  that 
most  nearly  squares  up  with  the  psycholo¬ 
gical  teachings  and  presuppositions  of  the 
Bible  and  which  makes  possible  the  erection 
of  orthodox  theology.  The  chief  tenets  of 
this  school  such  as  the  value  of  the  testimony 
of  consciousness,  the  value  of  introspection, 
the  doctrine  of  the  existence  in  man  of  an 
enduring  personality  that  thinks,  and  feels, 
and  wills,  the  importance  of  common  sense, 
and  the  truth  of  the  duality  in  experience  of 
a  material  and  of  a  spiritual  world — all  of 
these  positions  were  largely  sound  and  very 
helpful  to  a  study  of  religion.  It  is  the 
vogue  in  scientific  and  pseudo  philosophic 
circles  to  speak  disparagingly  of  the  old  psy- 

[32] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

chology,  and  to  denominate  it,  “The  faculty 
psychology  long  discarded.”  Of  course,  there 
were  some  crudities  about  it,  and  there  was 
a  tendency  to  accept  in  too  uncritical  a  spirit 
the  findings  of  consciousness  and  of  common 
sense.  But  with  all  of  its  short-comings  it 
still  stands  as  a  truer,  more  exact  interpreta¬ 
tion  of  man’s  psychic  life  than  many  of  our 
highly  specialized,  ultra  scientific,  quasi 
philosophical  forms  of  the  so-called  “New 
Psychology.”  After  a  student  comes  from  the 
highly  technical,  behaviouristic,  evolutionary 
terms  of  the  new  to  the  simple,  common  sense 
statements  of  the  old,  he  feels  like  a  traveler 
who  has  left  the  malarial,  boggy,  enervating 
lowlands  of  a  swamp  country  and  risen  in 
altitude  to  the  bracing,  inspiring,  tonic 
heights  of  a  lofty  plateau.  The  old  Psycho¬ 
logy  may  be  lacking  in  scientific  terminology 
and  in  reaction  experiments,  and  may  be 
too  metaphysical — but  it  leaves  a  sound 
foundation  upon  which  Christianity  may  be 
constructed.  All  honour  to  those  men  who 
in  their  day  stood  forth  unflinchingly  for  the 
doctrine  of  the  existence  of  a  human  soul, 
and  who,  in  the  face,  ofttimes,  of  contempt 
and  misrepresentation  contended  for  their 
position.  They  have  laid  the  foundation 
upon  which  a  Christian  system  of  thought 
can  be  built,  and  have  made  possible  a  ra¬ 
tional,  enduring  theology. 

In  the  next  place,  let  us  notice  briefly  the 
rise  of  the  New  Psychology,  and  its  bearing 
on  the  Christian  life.  Side  by  side  with  the 

[33] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Natural  Realism  there  has  always  existed  a 
psychology  of  protest.  This  rejected  the 
doctrine  of  the  soul  and  resolved  man  into 
a  bundle  of  associated  ideas  and  sensations. 
The  greatest  representatives  of  this  school 
was  David  Hume  with  his  doctrines  of  Sensa¬ 
tionalism  and  Associationism.  In  his  system 
a  thorough-going  “Associationism,”  essen¬ 
tially  mechanical  in  character,  took  the  place 
of  self-consciousness,  as  held  in  the  older 
psychology.  He  divided  our  mental  life  into 
impressions  and  ideas.  The  flow,  connection, 
and  composition  of  these  ideas  was  ruled  by 
the  principle  of  association.  In  order  more 
fully  to  explain  some  of  our  more  fundamen¬ 
tal  thoughts  and  axioms  and  the  feeling  of 
identity  in  our  mental  life,  he  buttressed  his 
doctrine  of  the  power  of  association  by  the 
principle  of  “custom”  or  “habit.”  Whatever 
has  the  semblence  in  our  psychic  life  of  fixed¬ 
ness,  necessity,  or  permanence  is  said  to  be 
due  to  the  working  of  this  principle.  In  his 
hand,  habit  worked  wonders,  almost  miracles ; 
and  essayed  to  perform  the  role  that  the  “in¬ 
ner  sense”  of  John  Locke,  the  formal  cate¬ 
gories  of  thought  of  Kant,  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  human  soul  in  Natural  Realism  all 
claimed  to  do.  As  Baldwin  well  says  in  his 
History  of  Psychology,  “Things  repeatedly 
and  invariably  associated  together  become 
parts  of  one  whole  over  which  habit  over¬ 
flows  and  to  which  habit  gives  the  sanction  of 
a  universal  and  necessary  connection.”  Such 
was  the  position  of  that  greatest  representa- 

[34] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

tive  of  the  psychology  that  opposed  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  the  human  soul.  Opponents  of  the 
belief  in  human  personality  have  never  found 
a  more  subtle,  acute  protagonist  than  David 
Hume. 

Another  development  in  the  New  Psy¬ 
chology  came  with  the  introduction  of  ex¬ 
perimental  work  in  this  line.  Perhaps  the 
greatest  exponent  of  this  position  was  the 
German  Psychologist  Wundt.  He  calls  his 
science  “empirical”  psychology  to  distinguish 
it  from  the  “Metaphysical”  psychology  of  the 
old  school.  He  says  in  his  Outlines  of  Psy¬ 
chology,  “The  characteristic  that  distin¬ 
guishes  metaphysical  psychology  from  empi¬ 
rical  psychology  is,  then,  to  be  found  in  the 
attempt  of  metaphysical  psychology  to  deduce 
psychical  processes,  not  from  other  psychical 
processes,  but  from  some  substratum  entire¬ 
ly  unlike  these  processes  themselves :  either 
from  the  manifestation  of  special  mind  sub¬ 
stance,  or  from  the  attributes  and  processes 
of  matter.”  There  arose  a  distinct  line  of 
mental  research  called  “Mental  Chrono- 
metry,”  which  inquires  into  the  time  taken 
up  by  psycho-physical  and  mental  processes. 
The  time  of  the  reaction  from  sense  to 
muscular  response — as  when  I  press  a  key 
as  soon  as  I  see  a  light — may  be  divided  into 
three  parts :  that  of  the  sensory  transmission 
by  the  optic  nerve,  secondly,  that  of  the  cen¬ 
tral  or  brain  process,  and  finally  that  of  the 
motor  transmission  to  the  muscles  of  the 
hand.  Now,  since  the  time  required  for  parts 

[35] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

one  and  three  may  be  calculated,  this  may  be 
deducted  from  the  whole,  and  the  actual  time 
of  cerebral  processes  discovered.  Such  is  the 
method  of  the  experimental  psychology. 
This  demanded  that  psychology  and  its  prob¬ 
lems  should  be  approached  rather  in  the 
spirit  of  science  than  of  metaphysics.  Where 
it  was  not  hostile  to  the  existence  of  the 
human  soul,  it  was  agnostic  on  the  subject; 
and  left  such  shadowy,  scholastic,  unscientific 
themes  to  the  metaphysicians  in  their  cloist¬ 
ered  halls. 

Undoubtedly  the  greatest  representative  in 
America  of  the  New  Psychology  was  William 
James.  He  has  written  in  a  wonderful  style; 
and  has  advanced  many  theories  that  are  il¬ 
luminating  and  suggestive.  Much  of  his  psy¬ 
chology  is  sound.  He  resolves  personality 
into  a  stream  of  consciousness.  His  psy¬ 
chology  is  permeated  with  his  pragmatic 
spirit,  and  shows  a  decided  disinclination  to 
consider  any  reality  as  final  or  fixed.  The 
Psychology  of  William  James  is  by  no  means 
unfavorable  to  religion.  It  merely  does  not 
leave  as  carefully  prepared  a  foundation  for 
a  theological  super-structure  as  the  old  psy¬ 
chology.  Natural  Realism  had  left  the  stones 
all  laid,  and  the  foundation  ready  for  the 
building  of  a  religious  edifice.  The  psy¬ 
chology  of  James  leaves  many  good  stones 
there — but  the  theologian  before  he  erects 
his  building,  must  roll  up  his  sleeves,  and 
construct  as  staple  a  foundation  as  possible 
out  of  the  stones  at  his  disposal. 


[36] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

At  this  point  we  would  mention  the  rise  of 
Genetic  Psychology  or  the  science  dealing 
with  mental  origins,  and  its  religious  bear¬ 
ing.  The  inspiration  of  this  was  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  Naturalistic  Evolution.  Its  pre¬ 
cursors  were  Lamarcke  with  his  belief  in 
the  transmission  of  acquired  characters,  and 
Charles  Darwin  with  his  doctrines  of  the 
continuity  of  animal  and  human  organisms 
both  as  to  physical,  mental  and  moral  char¬ 
acteristics,  and  of  development  through  the 
operation  of  natural  selection  and  the  sur¬ 
vival  of  the  fittest.  Perhaps  the  best  repre¬ 
sentative  of  this  evolutionary  period  was 
Herbert  Spencer.  He  applied  consciously 
and  directly  the  principles  of  psychology 
which  were  implicit  in  Darwin.  The  native 
a  priori  forms  of  the  mind  were  looked  upon 
as  solidified  social  experience,  acquired, 
hardened,  transmitted  by  heredity.  In  more 
modern  times  the  positions  of  this  school 
have  undoubtedly  been  taken  up  and  ampli¬ 
fied  by  the  “Behaviourists.”  They  contend 
that  we  should  cease  trying  to  study  the  soul, 
or  character  of  a  man,  but  should  confine  all 
of  our  efforts  to  a  consideration  of  his  ex¬ 
ternal  acts,  or  behaviour.  Psychology  with 
this  school  is  resolved  largely  into  a  study 
of  animal  and  human  behaviour  and  a  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  laws  operative  in  the  one 
sphere  of  actions.  They  interpret  the  mind 
in  terms  of  the  “behaviour”  of  the  organism 
under  different  conditions.  The  American 
Psychologist,  Professor  Holt,  for  instance, 

[37] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

very  clearly  expounds  the  view  that  mind  is 
merely  the  “integration”  of  the  organism’s 
motor  response  to  stimuli.  In  line  with  this 
same  general  position  is  the  psychological 
positions  of  that  new  school,  the  Neo-Realism. 
In  their  hatred  of  all  that  is  subjective  and 
in  their  passion  for  all  that  is  objective,  some 
of  the  writers  reduce  consciousness  to  a  mere 
relation  between  external  objects.  Others 
hold  that  consciousness  is  a  mere  trans¬ 
parency  that,  like  a  good  window  glass, 
enables  us  to  see  outside  objects  just  as  they 
are  without  in  any  way  changing  them. 
Then,  there  are  some,  like  Spaulding,  who 
adopting  a  term  from  mathematics,  hold  that 
consciousness  is  a  dimension.  It  must  be 
evident  to  all  that  these  various  positions 
unite  in  taking  away  from  us  entirely  the 
doctrine  of  human  personality.  The  human 
mind  cries  out  for  bread — an  abiding,  spiri¬ 
tual  principle  that  can  give  unity,  indivi¬ 
duality,  and  a  sense  of  identity  to  man’s 
psychic  life — and  genetic  psychology  has 
given  it  a  stone,  a  dimension. 

Then  there  is  a  newer  psychology  still. 
This  is  the  science  that  is  built  on  such  fac¬ 
tors  in  man’s  psychic  life  as  the  doctrine  of 
the  subconscious,  the  theory  of  fundamental 
complexes  built  out  of  the  primary  instincts 
that  are  evolved  from  lower  animals,  the 
power  of  suggestion  (both  auto  and  hetero), 
and  various  theories  as  to  divided  personality. 
The  tendency  of  this  psychology  is  to  fit  all 
our  psychic  life  into  abnormal  moulds.  The 

[38] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

alienest  and  the  student  of  paranoia  would 
now  become  our  authority  on  all  psychic  mat¬ 
ters.  The  difference  between  this  and  the 
old  psychology  is  well  brought  out  by  Tansley, 
the  chief  exponent  of  the  new  position,  in  his 
New  Psychology.  He  says  that  for  many 
years  the  subject  matter  of  psychology  was 
almost  entirely  limited  to  what  is  called  “the 
content  of  consciousness,”  and  that  its  sole 
method  of  investigation  was  introspection. 
He  contends  that  a  great  advance  in  recent 
years  has  been  largely  due  to  a  recognition 
of  the  part  played  by  the  unconscious  and 
non-rational  processes  in  mental  life.  He 
holds  that  this  great  change  is  due,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  the  evolutionary,  biological  way 
of  regarding  the  human  mind  as  absolutely 
evolved  from  the  lower  animals,  and,  on  the 
other,  to  a  new  comprehension  of  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  abnormal  mental  processes,  or  psy¬ 
chopathology.  As  we  go  into  the  position  of 
this  abnormal  psychology  in  some  detail  in 
our  two  chapters  on  The  New  Psychology, 
we  will  not  discuss  it  further  at  this  point. 

Briefly  we  have  tried  to  trace  the  relation¬ 
ship  of  these  two  currents  of  thought.  We 
have  now  come  to  the  point  where  we  must 
notice  the  rise  of  the  science  of  Psychology 
of  Religion.  This  is  a  comparatively  new 
science.  We  find  precursors  of  it  in  that 
great  work  of  Augustine,  The  Confessions, 
and  in  the  treatise  of  that  great  American 
psychologist,  philosopher,  and  theologian, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  on  The  Religious  Affec- 

[39] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

tions  in  three  parts.  But  these  were  more 
of  a  metaphysical,  devotional,  and  theolo¬ 
gical  nature  than  scientific  and  psychological. 
They  were  only  heralds  of  the  dawn  of  the 
new  science ;  and  it  was  many  years  after 
their  appearance  before  the  dawn.  For  a 
long,  long  time  scientists  and  psychologists 
never  seemed  to  think  that  the  phenomena  of 
the  religious  life  should  be  studied.  Either 
they  were  too  indifferent  to  the  whole  sub¬ 
ject  of  religious  phenomena  to  consider  them 
worth  investigating,  or  else  they  considered 
the  religious  precincts  too  sacred  to  be  in¬ 
vaded  by  the  methods  of  science.  The  real 
pioneers  in  this  work,  who  broke  the  ground 
in  the  field  of  religious  psychology,  were  Wil¬ 
liams  James  in  his  Varieties  of  Religious  Ex¬ 
perience  and  Starbuck  in  his  Psychology  of 
Religion.  These  men  for  the  first  time,  in¬ 
vestigated  the  factors  of  the  religious  life  in 
an  inductive,  scientific  spirit.  Of  course,  they 
made  no  really  new  discoveries  in  the  field 
of  religious  phenomena ;  and  they  seemed  to 
lack  the  power  of  critical  discrimination  that 
would  enable  them  to  judge  between  the  true 
and  the  false,  the  sane  and  the  extravagant 
in  the  sphere  of  religious  phenomena.  The 
chief  value  of  their  efforts  is  that  they  mani¬ 
fested  to  the  world  of  science  the  importance 
of  the  religious  facts  in  life,  and  that,  by  ex¬ 
ample  and  teaching,  they  made  it  clear  that 
Christianity,  as  a  psychic  study,  is  just  as 
worthy  of  scientific  consideration  as  are  those 
data  that  can  be  weighed  and  measured. 

[40] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

The  day  has  gone  when  scientists  and  philo¬ 
sophers  can  contemptuously  rule  out  of  court, 
as  unworthy  of  all  serious  attention  and  in¬ 
vestigation,  the  data  of  the  religious  life. 
This  new  standing  in  the  scientific  field,  is, 
I  believe,  largely  due  to  the  careful,  pains¬ 
taking  efforts  of  these  pioneers  in  the  work 
of  psychology  of  religion.  Then,  too,  their 
efforts  had  a  helpful  influence  on  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  Christianity  itself.  It  was  made 
clear  once  for  all  to  Christian  thinkers  that 
in  the  psychology  of  religion,  they  had  a 
wonderful  field  for  investigation  and  study. 
It  was  evident  that  critical  principles  and 
scientific  methods  could  be  well  applied  to 
all  spheres  of  Christian  work  and  religious 
education.  Hence,  largely  through  the  ef¬ 
forts  of  these  early  students  of  psychology 
of  religion,  a  large  field  with  wonderful 
potentialities  was  opened  up  for  the  theolo¬ 
gian,  the  minister,  the  student  of  Sunday 
School  education,  and,  in  fact,  for  all  of  those 
who  are  interested  in  more  than  a  super¬ 
ficial  way  in  the  activities  of  the  Christian 
life.  More  and  more  has  it  become  manifest 
that  this  is  a  field  in  which  onlv  the  Chris- 
tian  thinker  is  qualified  to  make  fruitful  in¬ 
vestigations  and  sound  deductions.  The  un¬ 
believer  may  collect  inductively  the  facts  of 
the  religious  life,  but  just  because  he  has  had 
no  spiritual  experience  or  first-hand  acquaint¬ 
ance  with  the  data  of  Christianity,  he  is  not 
prepared  to  make  any  helpful  or  sound  inter¬ 
pretations  of  the  phenomena  before  him. 

[41] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Thus,  while  scientists  who  are  not  Chris¬ 
tians  may  point  out  the  vast  possibilities 
latent  in  the  new  field  of  psychology  of  re¬ 
ligion,  yet  it  remains  for  the  genuine  Chris¬ 
tian  to  develop  this  new  science  to  its  highest 
consummation.  Surely  the  opening  up  of 
this  new  field  of  exploration  constitutes  a 
mighty  challenge  to  all  of  the  scientific  ac¬ 
curacy,  and  to  all  of  the  subtle  powers  of 
criticism  and  investigation  that  the  Christian 
thinker  possesses.  I  would  not  leave  the 
reader  under  the  impression  that  James  and 
Starbuck  were  the  only  pioneers  in  this  field. 
There  were  also  men  who  like  Dr.  G.  Stanley 
Hall  began  the  periodical  which  since  1912 
has  been  called  The  Journal  of  Religious  Psy¬ 
chology,  and  like  Coe,  who  in  1900  wrote 
The  Spiritual  Life.  The  further  develop¬ 
ment  of  this  science  may  be  well  divided  into 
a  left  and  a  right  wing.  In  the  rest  of  this 
chapter  we  will  consider  these  two  lines  of 
investigation. 

The  left  wing  may  be  represented  by  such 
characteristic  writers  as  James  Leuba,  who 
has  written  A  Psychological  Study  of  Re¬ 
ligion  and  a  Belief  in  God  and  Immortality; 
by  Ames,  who  has  written  a  Psychology  of 
Religious  Experience;  by  James  Bissett 
Pratt,  who  has  written  a  book  entitled  The 
Religious  Consciousness,  and  by  Swisher  in 
Religion  and  the  New  Psychology.  This 
angle  of  psychological  development  is  de¬ 
structive  rather  than  constructive.  A  fav¬ 
orite  method  of  this  school,  used  especially 

[42] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

by  James  Leuba,  has  been  the  inductive  or 
questionaire  method  that  was  inaugurated  by 
Starbuck  and  James.  A  series  of  religious 
questions  would  be  sent  out  to  representative 
men  in  all  lines  of  endeavor,  and  from  the 
replies  received,  various  theories  of  religious 
interpretation  would  be  formed.  This  is 
liable  to  all  of  the  dangers  of  the  inductive, 
statistical  method  of  investigation.  When 
inductions  along  religious  lines  are  divorced 
from  all  of  the  fundamental  axioms  of  re¬ 
ligion  and  from  all  of  the  stabilizing  influ¬ 
ences  of  great  general  principles,  then  most 
faulty  and  illogical  generalizations  are  likely 
to  result.  This  has  actually  been  the  case  in 
many  of  these  so-called  scientific  studies. 
When  a  man  forms  his  generalizations  from 
a  limited  number  of  replies  received  from 
a  rather  limited  sphere  of  investigation  with¬ 
out  any  regard  to  the  general  principles  of 
revelation,  morality  or  religion,  then  there 
is  no  limit  to  the  fantastic  theories  of  re¬ 
ligious  interpretation  that  he  may  concoct. 
As  I  have  said  above,  the  purpose  of  this 
left  wing  of  psychological  investigation 
seems  to  be  destructive  rather  than  construc¬ 
tive.  It  would  tear  down  completely  the 
strongholds  of  orthodoxy.  In  the  hands  of 
liberal  thinkers  the  psychology  of  religion 
has  been  converted  into  a  weapon  with  which 
to  tear  down  the  bulwarks  of  the  Christian 
faith.  I  have  said  that  in  its  passion  for 
the  purely  inductive  method  it  made  no  ap¬ 
peal  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  mo¬ 
rality,  or  revelation.  If  there  is  any  sphere 
[43] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

to  whose  general  principles  and  ultimate  con¬ 
clusions  it  appeals,  it  is  the  field  of  Natural¬ 
istic  Evolution.  For  the  destructive  critic 
of  religion  the  dicta  of  Evolution  have  be¬ 
come  the  final  court  of  appeal,  and  the  ulti¬ 
mate  and  absolute  revelation  of  the  truth. 
The  method  of  this  left  wing  is  to  attempt 
to  reduce  all  of  the  higher  data  of  the  re¬ 
ligious  consciousness  to  phenomena  of  a 
lower  sphere.  Especially  would  it  find  in  the 
deliverance  of  Naturalistic  Evolution  the 
complete  explanation,  by  means  of  an  appeal 
to  primitive  religious  practices,  of  all  those 
Christian  experiences  that  are  so  vital  to 
the  believer.  The  higher  is  to  be  interpreted 
in  terms  of  the  lower.  By  such  writers  as 
E.  S.  Ames  in  his  Psychology  of  Religious 
Experience,  religion  is  identified  with  the 
emergence  of  the  social  consciousness  and  is 
based,  from  the  positive  standpoint,  on  the 
“mores”  or  customs  of  the  tribe  to  which  a 
religious  sanction  has  been  given  and  which 
correspond  to  the  “thou  shalts”  of  the  moral 
law;  and  from  the  negative  standpoint,  on 
the  taboo,  or  that  place,  object,  or  event 
which  would  hinder  the  collective,  social  life 
of  the  tribe,  and  which  corresponds  to  the 
“Thou  shalt  nots”  of  the  Bible.  This  left 
wing  teaches  that  conversion  is  purely  an 
emergence  at  the  adolescent  period  of  the 
domination  of  the  higher  centers ;  that 
revivals  are  explicable  by  what  has  been  dis¬ 
covered  of  the  rhythm  of  life,  and  the  psy¬ 
chology  of  the  mob ;  that  belief  is  really  feel- 

144] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


ing  founded  on  sense  perception ;  that  wor¬ 
ship  arises  from  the  gregarious  or  herd  in¬ 
stinct,  and  from  man’s  desire  for  expres¬ 
sion;  that  the  moral  law  is  only  an  expedi¬ 
ency  founded  on  the  needs,  for  the  moment, 
of  the  herd;  in  fact,  that  all  religious  prac¬ 
tices  and  theistic  beliefs  are  to  be  supplanted, 
in  the  process  of  evolution,  by  that  purely 
social  religion  in  which  the  mandates  of  the 
crowd  take  the  place  of  the  moral  law,  and 
the  will  of  society  usurps  the  throne  of  the 
Divine  Being.  The  final  position,  if  there  be 
any  final  conclusion  to  such  methods,  is  that 
the  old  beliefs  in  God  and  Immortality  are 
hurtful  to  man  in  his  struggle,  and  should 
be  given  up  entirely.  Such  is  the  blind  alley 
of  negation  into  which  this  left  wing  of 
religious  psychology  has  brought  the  be¬ 
liever.  Surely  this  destructive  position  of 
this  branch  of  the  psychology  of  religion  is 
a  distinct  challenge  to  the  defenders  of  the 
old  faith. 

In  the  next  place,  I  would  note  the  work 
done  by  what  I  have  styled  the  right  wing 
of  religious  psychology.  This  is  ably  repre¬ 
sented  by  such  men  as:  James  Stalker  with 
his  Christian  Psychology;  James  Snowden 
with  his  Psychology  of  Religion;  Gardner 
and  Psychology  and  Preaching;  Pym  with 
Psychology  and  the  Christian  Life;  E.  L. 
House  and  The  Psychology  of  Orthodoxy; 
Hudson  in  Recent  Psychology  and  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Religion.  The  work  of  these  men  is 
constructive  rather  than  destructive.  They 

[45] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

well  realize  the  limitations  of  the  study,  and 
have  not  endeavoured  to  make  the  deliver¬ 
ances  of  the  new  science  of  psychology  of 
religion  take  the  place  of  the  Divine  Relation 
from  God.  In  their  hands  the  study  becomes 
an  ally  instead  of  an  enemy  to  the  Christian 
Faith.  In  general,  their  work  and  investiga¬ 
tions  are  postulated  on  the  foundation  of 
orthodox,  evangelical  Christianity.  Their 
purpose  is  by  means  of  a  study  of  the  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion  to  inject  into  all  forms 
of  religious  work  and,  especially  into  reli¬ 
gious  education,  more  scientific,  efficient 
methods ;  to  unlock  by  their  investigations 
for  the  average  Christian  the  deeper  riches 
and  untold  treasures  of  a  boundless  Chris¬ 
tian  experience;  and  in  the  sphere  of  apolo¬ 
getics,  to  show  conclusively  that  the  natural 
revelation  which  God  has  made  of  Himself 
and  of  man’s  nature  in  the  sphere  of  Psy¬ 
chology  harmonizes  in  every  way  with  the 
supernatural  revelation  which  He  has  made 
both  of  His  Being  and  of  man’s  needs  in  the 
Bible.  In  general,  the  above  purposes  have 
been  well  discharged.  There  is  one  criticism 
that  I  would  pass  on  the  work  of  these  men 
of  the  right  wing.  In  some  cases  they  have 
lacked  the  spirit  of  criticism  and  of  philo¬ 
sophic  poise,  and  have  manifested  too  great 
a  haste  to  accept  unquestioningly  the  newest 
deliverances  of  the  scientists,  and  have  tried 
post  haste  to  fit  the  facts  of  religion  into  the 
newly-discovered  mould,  even  if  there  is  a 
strain  and  a  pinch  somewhere.  Many  of 

[46] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

these  writers  have  showed  a  tendency  to  be 
worshippers  of  the  “Zeitgeist” ;  to  accept  at 
once  without  a  critical  judgment  all  of  the 
newest  psychologic  deliverances ;  and  to  lack 
the  spirit  of  genuine  criticism.  That  is  one 
weakness  of  many  American  thinkers  and 
preachers :  they  worship  at  the  shrine  of 
passing  and  ephemeral  philosophic  and 
scientific  discoveries.  Some  preachers  read 
of  some  new  psychological  theory,  and  then, 
forthwith  announce  that  they  will  preach 
on  this  subject  next  Sunday  night,  and  show 
how  religion  must  be  recast  to  fit  into  this 
new  mould.  What  the  world  needs  impera¬ 
tively  today  is  more  of  the  note  of  authority 
in  pulpit  and  in  thelogical  chair — that  spirit 
which  will  refuse  to  accept  every  new  psy¬ 
chological  or  philosophical  theory,  even  if 
it  is  backed  up  by  the  prestige  of  some  ultra 
specialist.  One  great  advantage  of  the  min¬ 
ister’s  position  is  that  he  may  speak  with  a 
note  of  authority.  He  may  not  be  competent 
to  make  elaborate  reaction  experiments ;  he 
may  not  be  a  specialist  in  abnormal  psy¬ 
chology;  but  when  it  comes  to  dealing  with 
the  nature,  the  origin,  the  needs,  the  laws 
of  human  personality,  he  can  speak  with  a 
note  of  absolute  finality,  such  as  no  other 
can  do.  Let  the  religious  worker  stand  by 
his  guns ;  and  contend,  especially  in  regard 
to  the  nature  of  the  soul,  for  the  faith  once 
for  all  delivered  to  the  saints.  It  is  this  note 
of  authority,  of  certitude,  and  of  conviction 
in  regard  to  human  personality  that  is  lack- 

147] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ing  in  American  religious  life  today.  The 
preacher  is  the  very  man  to  restore  this  miss¬ 
ing  element.  The  peril  of  the  status  of  the 
psychology  of  religion  today  is  that  it  is  be¬ 
ing  discussed  ofttimes  by  men  who  are  not 
specialists  in  regard  either  to  the  things  of 
God  or  man ;  and  that  often  hasty,  erroneous, 
and  even  dangerous  theories  will  be  con¬ 
cocted.  In  this  hour  when  psychology  has 
come  into  its  own,  and  when  even  the  daily 
papers  are  publishing  popular  discussions  on 
Psycho-analysis  and  Auto-suggestion,  it  well 
behooves  the  religious  worker  to  realize  the 
dangers  incident  to  such  popular  and  often 
superficial  discussions,  and  to  supply  that 
element  of  absoluteness  and  authority  in  re¬ 
gard  to  the  religious  aspect  of  personality 
that  is  so  much  needed. 


[48] 


Chapter  III. 


Human  Personality 

IN  this  chapter  I  wish  to  discuss  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  personality.  Perhaps  it  will  sur¬ 
prise  many  readers  to  hear  that  the  fact 
of  personality  is  called  in  question  today.  On 
the  one  hand,  it  is  denied  by  those  material¬ 
istic  psychologists  who  reduce  all  of  man’s 
psychic  life  to  external  behaviour  with  the 
three-fold  process  of  outward  stimulus,  cen¬ 
tral  re-adjustment,  and  motor  response.  If 
personality  is  not  denied,  it  is  made  an  im¬ 
potent  spectator  of  the  purely  mechanical, 
nervous  adjustment  between  the  organism 
and  its  environment.  By  other  writers  per¬ 
sonality  is  the  mere  summation  of  the  vari¬ 
ous  attitudes  of  our  conscious  and  subcon¬ 
scious  life.  Such  is  the  challenge  from  the 
materialistic,  functional  psychology  to  per¬ 
sonality.  Then  there  is  an  equally  urgent 
challenge  from  the  idealistic  wing.  They 
teach  that  man  is  inherently  divine,  a  part 
of  God,  and  that  salvation  consists  in  the 
obliterating  of  the  distinction  between  his 
personality  and  God’s.  They  end  up  by  de¬ 
stroying  personality  just  as  truly  as  does  the 
materialist.  What  is  the  problem  of  per¬ 
sonality?  It  is  not  whether  in  his  psychic 
life  man  possesses  a  stream  of  consciousness-^ 
that  flows  on  uninterruptedly  from  day  to 
day;  it  is  not  whether  in  the  midst  of  the 

[49] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

multiplicity  of  his  experiences  he  has  a  feel¬ 
ing  of  inter-connectedness  between  his  vari¬ 
ous  states  of  consciousness.  The  issue  re¬ 
solves  itself  into  this :  whether  in  the  midst 
of  the  various  transient  states  that  we  call 
experience  there  abides  a  personality  that 
has  unity,  identity,  and  a  peculiar  indivi¬ 
duality,  separate  from  other  personalities 
and  from  God’s ;  or  to  put  the  matter  in 
theological  terms,  the  problem  reduces  itself 
to  this:  does  man  possess  a  soul? 

This  issue  is  most  important  to  all  psy¬ 
chology,  but  especially  to  the  psychology  of 
religion.  If  man  is  a  mere  bundle  of  sensa¬ 
tions,  or  a  bare  stream  of  consciousness,  or 
a  mathematical  dimension,  as  the  Neo- 
Realists  insist,  then  he  has  no  soul  worthy 
of  the  name  to  save.  If  this  be  the  case, 
then  while  we  may  study  man  and  his 
nervous  reactions  experimentally,  as  we 
would  investigate  the  animals,  yet  all  reli¬ 
gious  psychology  is  useless.  Let  me  insist 
again  THAT  THE  VERY  STUDY  OF  THE 
PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION  IMPLIES 
THAT  MAN  HAS  A  SOUL.  If  we  listen  to 
many  of  our  modern  psychologists,  we  would 
decide  that  man  has  no  soul  to  save,  and  that 
any  psychology  of  religion  is  a  useless  study. 
If  man  has  no  real  personality,  or  soul,  we 
had  just  as  well  disband  our  Sunday  Schools, 
tear  down  our  churches,  do  away  with  our 
missionary  societies,  and  cease  writing  or 
speaking  of  the  psychology  of  religion — yea, 
of  religion  itself.  Hence,  in  a  treatise  of 

[50] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

this  kind,  we  see  the  importance  of  ascer¬ 
taining  right  at  the  start  whether  there  is 
any  such  existence  in  man  as  an  enduring 
personality.  The  religious  worker  may  be 
rather  shocked  to  find  that  modern  psycho¬ 
logy  denies  the  existence  of  the  soul.  Now, 
it  may  not  do  so  in  these  words ;  but  it  is 
either  agnostic  towards  or  completely  op¬ 
posed  to  the  old  doctrine  that  man  has  an 
abiding  personality  with  unity,  identity,  and 
individuality.  It  insists  that  we  should  leave 
such  questions  alone  as  unworthy  of  psy¬ 
chology,  and  should  study  entirely  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  behaviour  both  of  man  and  of  the 
animals.  Hence,  it  behooves  those  who  are 
interested  in  the  fundamentals  of  orthodox 
psychology  to  come  once  more  to  the  defence 
of  the  doctrine  of  personality.  Has  man  a 
soul?  Let  us  at  this  point  note  some  of  the 
outstanding  arguments  for  the  existence  of 
real  personality  in  man. 


[51] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


WE  BELIEVE  THAT  MAN  HAS  AN 
ENDURING  PERSONALITY  FOR  THE 
FOLLOWING  REASONS: 

(I.) 

FROM  THE  FACT  THAT  ALL  THEORIES 
THAT  WOULD  SUPPLANT  THE 
DOCTRINE  IMPLY  IT. 

Thus  arose  in  the  last  century  the  practice 
of  trying  to  make  the  doctrine  of  the  associa¬ 
tion  of  ideas  take  the  place  of  any  real  theory 
of  personality.  All  of  man’s  mental  life  was 
resolved  into  the  association  of  ideas.  This 
was  made  the  mighty  power  that  generated 
all  his  thoughts,  emotions,  and  volitions.  The 
power  of  the  association  of  ideas  had  dis¬ 
placed  the  soul  of  man.  It  was  no  longer 
necessary,  and  could  be  discarded  along  with 
other  psychological  antiquities.  But  it  must 
be  clear  to  any  careful  thinker  that  the  bare 
doctrine  of  association  of  ideas  will  not  in 
some  automatic  way  generate  all  of  man’s 
psychic  activity  for  him.  The  very  notion 
of  association  of  ideas  demands  some  abid¬ 
ing,  permanent  entity  in  man’s  psychic  life 
to  which  the  various  mental  elements  can  be 
related,  some  kind  of  common  field  or  theatre 
in  which  the  association  of  ideas  can  take 
place.  We  begin  to  see  that  the  very  doctrine 
of  association  that  would  displace  the  soul 
demands  for  its  successful  operation  and  real 

[52] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

foundation  the  existence  of  an  abiding  per¬ 
sonality  in  man.  Then,  too,  while  associa¬ 
tion  might  in  some  mechanical  way  bring  up 
into  the  field  of  consciousness  our  past  ex¬ 
periences  and  direct  our  rather  instinctive 
and  habitual  actions,  yet  it  would  be  impotent 
to  generate  any  novel  ideas  or  to  do  any 
creative  thinking  in  general.  Only  a  real 
personality  can  accomplish  that.  Thus  we 
see  that  this  doctrine  that  would  supplant 
the  theory  of  personality,  demands  it  for  its 
successful  operation. 

So  it  is  with  our  modern  Neo-Realists. 
They  would  resolve  consciousness  into  a  mere 
relationship.  They  would  make  sense  data 
or  the  reports  of  our  five  senses  the  ultimate 
elements  in  man’s  psychic  life,  and  would 
build  up  all  his  psychic  experiences  from 
these.  In  fact,  the  Neo-Realist  would  do 
away  with  consciousness ;  and  in  his  passion 
for  the  purely  objective,  would  destroy  the 
subjective  entirely.  At  this  point  I  would 
like  to  ask  this  question,  “What  meaning 
have  sense  data,  unless  they  are  related  to 
a  personality  that  can  experience  them,  and 
to  whom  they  have  some  meaning?”  Thus 
the  very  doctrine  of  sense  data  demands  the 
existence  of  the  soul. 

The  New  Psychology  has  not  rendered  less 
valid  the  doctrine  of  personality.  As  an 
example  of  the  position  of  modern  psycho¬ 
logy,  we  find  that  Pierce  in  Our  Unconscious 
Mind  divides  the  field  of  psychic  activity  in 
man  into  the  three  fields  of  the  conscious, 

[53] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  fore-conscious,  and  the  unconscious.  Be¬ 
tween  the  conscious  and  the  foreconscious  he 
postulates  a  secondary  censor  that  tends  to 
protect  the  conscious,  to  keep  painful  ideas 
in  the  background,  and  to  keep  the  stream 
of  thought  clear.  Between  the  foreconscious 
and  the  unconscious  he  also  places  a  primary 
censor  that  is  protective  in  its  function,  and 
which  tends  to  keep  back  the  unconscious 
wishes  and  repressed  conflicts  of  our  lives. 
Now,  what  strikes  us  is  that  this  theory  of 
the  three  fields  of  psychic  activity  with  its 
two  censors  that  stand  like  sentinels,  is  a 
very  elaborate  mental  mechanism,  and  that 
like  all  complicated  structures,  it  should 
have  for  its  harmonious  working  some  cen¬ 
tral  head  that  shall  guide  smoothly  and  suc¬ 
cessfully  all  of  its  elaborate  operations.  All 
of  this  only  goes  to  prove  that  the  more  elab¬ 
orate  modern  psychology  makes  the  mechan¬ 
ism  of  man’s  mental  life,  the  more  imperative 
it  makes  the  demand  for  a  real  personality  as 
its  central  head.  In  other  words,  the  New 
Psychology  instead  of  rendering  less  credible 
the  doctrine  of  the  soul,  has  by  its  very  elab¬ 
orate  psychic  machinery  rendered  an  uncon¬ 
scious  testimony  to  the  need  for  an  abiding 
personality. 

Thus  we  see  that  every  theory  that  is  put 
forward  as  a  substitute  for  real  personality, 
demands  it  for  its  successful  operation.  This 
would  only  go  to  show  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  soul  is  basic  to  all  of  man’s  psychic  life, 
and  that  we  cannot  possibly  dispense  with  it. 

[54] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


(II.) 

BECAUSE  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  PERSON¬ 
ALITY  IS  NECESSARY  TO  MAKE 
INTELLIGIBLE  CERTAIN 
PSYCHIC  FACTORS  IN  A 
MAN’S  LIFE 

For  example,  there  is  the  fact  of  memory. 
Now  an  act  of  memory  implies  not  merely 
the  recurrence  of  an  object,  but  the  recur¬ 
rence  of  that  object  as  having  affected  an 
enduring  personality.  If  there  is  no  indentity 
about  the  subject,  the  fact  of  memory  is  in¬ 
explicable.  If  I  am  an  entirely  different 
person  today  from  what  I  was  last  year, 
then  the  recollection  of  a  certain  event  as 
affecting  me  at  a  given  time  and  place  last 
year,  would  have  no  meaning.  The  very  idea 
of  memory  would  become  meaningless,  and 
would  soon  drop  out  of  usage.  Professor 
Warren  in  Human  Psychology  explains 
memory  as  due  to  a  retention  trace  from  a 
past  experience  left  in  the  nervous  system. 
But  a  concrete  experience  of  memory  does 
not  consist  in  a  mere  revival  of  a  retention 
trace  of  past  scenes,  but  of  a  definite  revival 
of  these  happenings  as  having  occurred  to 
me,  as  being  mine,  in  other  words,  as  affect¬ 
ing  my  personality.  Thus  memory  to  be  ex¬ 
plicable  at  all  depends  on  a  personality  that 
endures  throughout  the  past  that  embraces 
the  given  recalled  events.  Porfessor  Warren 
says  that  memory  is  like  a  phonograph  rec- 

[55] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ord,  which  bears  no  resemblence  to  the  words 
or  music.  But  we  must  remember  that  it 
takes  personality  to  manipulate  a  phono¬ 
graph  record  before  we  have  music.  A  bare 
record  would  lie  idle  until  Doomsday  with¬ 
out  bringing  up  a  past. 

Let  us  consider  that  mysterious  quality 
of  our  being  that  we  call  the  sense  of  per¬ 
sonal  identity.  How  can  we  grow  older  day 
by  day,  have  new  experiences,  make  new  ac¬ 
quisitions,  forget  many  things,  and  yet  con¬ 
tinue  to  be  the  same  persons?  Jastrow  in 
The  Subconscious  speaks  of  this  as  follows: 
“The  feeling  of  personal  identity  is  thus 
something  deep,  intimate,  and  elemental,  and 
yet  participates  in  the  fluctuations  and  va¬ 
rieties  of  mental  experience.”  How  shall  we 
explain  this  mysterious  sense  of  personal 
identity  that  is  the  very  backbone  of  our 
existence?  Professor  James  with  his  stream 
of  consciousness  theory,  holds  that  about  all 
of  our  experience  there  is  a  certain  personal 
warmth  that  binds  all  of  them  together,  and 
renders  it  absolutely  certain  that  they  are 
our  own  and  do  not  belong  to  another.  But 
that  sense  of  private  and  personal  warmth 
is  the  very  thing  that  we  are  trying  to  ex¬ 
plain — and  should  not  be  given  as  an  ex¬ 
planation  itself.  The  best  explanation  of  this 
mystery  is  that  at  the  very  basis  of  all  our 
psychic  life  is  a  personality  that  abides  the 
same  throughout  life,  and  that  is  responsible 
for  this  sense  of  identity. 


[56] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Then  there  is  the  subtle  fact  of  meaning. 
Why  do  various  objective  experiences  have 
different  meanings  for  different  people?  Why 
does  a  mere  piece  of  goods  with  red,  white, 
and  blue  on  it  stir  up  feelings  of  patriotism 
in  one  man,  and  of  hatred  in  the  anarchist, 
an  enemy  to  all  government?  This  subtle 
sense  of  meaning  can  be  explained  only  by 
the  existence  of  an  enduring  personality  that 
is  affected  variously  by  the  different  experi¬ 
ences,  and  that  gives  to  each  a  meaning.  This 
interpretation  of  varied  experiences  cannot 
be  explained  merely  in  objective  terms  by 
the  pouring  in  of  sense  impressions  upon  the 
mind  from  the  external  world.  The  mind 
contributes  something  to  the  process.  There 
is  its  entire  past  with  its  storehouse  of 
memory  that  it  brings ;  there  are  certain  ulti¬ 
mate  categories  of  thought  that  it  imposes 
that  bring  order  out  of  chaos,  and  give  us  a 
real  sense  of  meaning.  If  you  deny  the  ex¬ 
istence  of  an  abiding  personality,  then  it 
logically  follows  that  the  given  external 
happening  would  have  the  same  meaning  for 
each  individual.  The  existence  of  this 
element  of  meaning  cannot  be  denied.  Even 
the  materialist  must  postulate  it  to  make 
his  own  theory  endure.  There  could  be  no 
doctrine  of  materialism  with  its  elaborate 
hypothesis  of  the  conservation  of  energy  in 
a  mere  world  where  atoms  impinged  upon 
each  other  mechanically  and  worked  out  all 
of  man’s  psychic  life.  If  materialism  is  to 
endure,  there  must  be  a  personality  with  a 

[57] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

mind  to  form  its  elaborate  hypotheses,  and 
to  understand  these  when  they  are  concocted. 
What  is  true  of  materialism  is  equally  true 
of  Neo-Realism.  With  its  highly  technical 
doctrines,  based  largely  on  modern  mathe¬ 
matics,  it  needs  a  mind  that  is  vastly  more 
than  a  mere  relationship  both  to  elaborate 
these  finely  spun  theories,  and  to  understand 
them  after  they  are  concocted. 

One  of  the  ablest,  clearest  exponents  of 
modern  “soul-less”  Psychology  is  Professor 
Warren  in  his  book  Human  Psychology.  He 
holds  that  the  changes  in  the  nervous  con¬ 
nections  are  not  due  to  a  mysterious  guiding 
agency,  which  acts  as  a  sort  of  telephone 
operator  within  us,  whose  duty  it  is  to  plug 
in  certain  connections  and  remove  others. 
Now  there  is  the  very  point  of  difference 
between  psychology  based  on  personality  and 
the  purely  behaviouristic  psychology.  To  the 
latter  the  mental  life  is  comparable  to  a  sort 
of  automatic  telephone  exchange  where  the 
connections  between  the  sensory  and  motor 
nerves  are  made  mechanically.  To  the  be¬ 
liever  in  personality,  while  there  are  the 
wires  and  connections  that  play  a  vital  part 
in  mental  life  and  are  comparable  to  the 
nervous  system,  yet  there  is  also  an  operator 
within,  who  has  a  hand  in  blocking  certain 
connections,  in  changing  others,  and  even  in 
initiating  messages  of  his  own. 

But  some  one  will  exclaim  with  horror, 
“You  are  bringing  philosophy  into  the  dis- 

[58] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

cussion — and  that  does  not  belong  in  a  treat¬ 
ment  of  psychology.”  My  reply  is  that  you 
can  have  no  sound  psychology  without  im¬ 
porting  philosophy  into  it.  If  psychology  is 
studied  merely  as  an  empirical  science,  then 
there  are  certain  great  facts  in  the  case  to 
which  justice  is  not  done.  There  are  cer¬ 
tain  fundamental  problems  in  psychology  like 
the  question  of  personality  that  cannot  be 
adequately  treated  without  bringing  in  philo¬ 
sophy.  If  philosophy  is  left  out,  then  we 
usually  have  a  warped,  poorly  balanced  psy¬ 
chology.  Then,  philosophy  is  needed  impera¬ 
tively  today  in  modern  psychology  to  bring 
that  coherence,  that  breadth  of  view,  that 
spirit  of  criticism  that  are  so  much  lacking 
in  all  current  discussions  along  these  lines. 
The  tendency  today  is  for  some  investigator 
to  make  some  startling  discovery  along  the 
lines  of  the  unconscious,  or  auto-suggestion, 
or  some  feature  of  abnormal  psychology,  and 
in  his  enthusiasm  for  his  new  truth  to  pro¬ 
claim  that  all  past  theories  are  false,  and 
to  try  to  make  all  the  facts  of  psychic  life 
fit  into  his  newly-discovered  mould.  We 
need,  I  say,  philosophy  in  psychology  to  cor¬ 
rect  this  tendency  to  go  off  at  a  tangent  after 
every  new  discovery  in  the  field  of  abnormal 
psychology,  and  to  give  to  the  science  that 
sanity,  that  depth,  and  that  coherence  which 
it  once  had.  We  need  more  psychologists 
like  James  Ward,  who,  with  an  accurate 
knowledge  of  modern  science,  combines  a 
well-balanced  philosophic  spirit. 

[59] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


(HI.) 

BECAUSE  IT  IS  NECESSARY  TO  EX¬ 
PLAIN  CERTAIN  MORAL  AND 
SPIRITUAL  FACTORS  IN 
MAN’S  LIFE 

There  are  certain  moral  data  in  life  that 
we  must  consider.  Thus  there  is  the  feeling 
of  oughtness,  the  sense  of  responsibility  to 
a  higher  power,  the  fact  of  communion  with 
God,  and  all  the  peace,  joy,  and  faith  that 
constitute  the  blessedness  of  religious  ex¬ 
perience.  It  is  needless  to  state  that  these 
are  inexplicable,  unless  there  is  a  soul  to 
experience  them.  What  meaning  can  there 
be  to  the  sense  of  responsibility,  if  man  is 
a  fleeting  stream  of  consciousness  with  no 
sense  of  identity?  If  I  am  a  different  person 
tomorrow  from  what  I  am  today,  it  would 
be  wicked  to  punish  me  today  for  what  I 
have  done  in  the  past.  The  very  notions  of 
responsibility  and  of  liability  to  just  punish¬ 
ment  would  disappear,  if  there  is  no  abiding 
personality.  So  it  would  be  with  all  of  the 
higher  conceptions  of  the  religious  life. 
Faith  itself  implies  that  there  is  a  real 
personality  that  looks  upward  and  casts 
itself  upon  a  higher  power. 

But  the  scientist  exclaims  with  holy  horror 
that  these  religious  data  have  no  scientific 
validity — and  rules  them  forthwith  out  of 
court.  I  claim  that  these  data  exist  for  a 

[60] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

whole  host  of  people,  even  if  they  do  not 
for  others — and  that  it  is  unscientific  to 
neglect  a  whole  segment  of  phenomena  that 
bear  upon  a  given  subject.  The  scientist  is 
ever  claiming  that  all  of  the  factors  must 
be  considered,  and  that  a  given  hypothesis 
must  satisfy  not  a  part,  but  all  of  them.  I 
claim  that  the  data  of  religion  are  just  as 
worthy  of  scientific  consideration  —  yea, 
more  so,  then  cases  of  hysteria  and  insanity. 
The  time  has  come  when  Christians  must 
brand  as  unscientific  in  the  highest  degree, 
the  framing  of  hypotheses  that  leave  out  of 
account  whole  segments  of  human  experi¬ 
ence.  We  have  had  too  much  unscientific 
psychology  of  this  kind.  The  preacher  needs 
to  speak  with  authority  on  his  subject.  He 
needs  to  realize  that  the  data  of  the  religious 
life  are  the  ultimates  of  experience.  The 
time  has  come  for  him  no  longer  to  be  afraid 
of  every  ultra  specialist  who  has  given  his 
life  to  the  study  of  hysterical  women  or 
cases  of  paranoia  and  who  thinks  that  he 
can  fit  all  of  the  facts  of  psychology  into  his 
peculiar  mould  of  thought.  We  need,  espe¬ 
cially  in  the  ministry,  that  note  of  authority 
in  regard  to  the  fundamentals  of  life  that 
was  so  marked  in  the  work  of  our  Lord 
Jesus.  Let  all  of  those  who  love  the  historic 
faith  cease  to  cringe  and  fawn  before  every 
ultra  specialist  in  the  field  of  psychology 
and  stand  firmly  by  their  guns. 


[61] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


(IV.) 

BECAUSE  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  PER¬ 
SONALITY  IS  A  SELF-EVI¬ 
DENT  TRUTH 

The  opponents  of  the  doctrine  of  the  soul 
claim  that  it  is  very  mysterious  and  far¬ 
fetched,  and  that  it  is  founded  on  the 
scholastic  doctrine  of  the  existence  of  a 
strange  substance  that  underlies  all  pheno¬ 
mena.  They  hold  that  since  this  substance 
theory  has  long  been  rejected,  that  the  be¬ 
lief  in  the  soul,  which  has  been  postulated 
upon  it,  should  be  given  up  in  like  manner. 
They  would  caricature  the  subject  as  an  in¬ 
tangible,  impalpable,  magical  substance  lying 
back  of  the  facts  of  our  every-day  psychic 
life.  They  claim  that  we  know  absolutely 
nothing  of  it,  but  that  it  is  the  creation  of 
an  exploded  philosophy.  We  would  reply 
to  this  that  the  doctrine  of  the  soul  instead 
of  being  mysterious,  intangible,  and 
scholastic  is  the  most  immediate,  self- 
evident  fact  in  our  whole  life.  We  know  our 
own  personality  immediately  in  every  act  of 
cognition,  or  emotion,  or  willing.  Every  act 
of  self-consciousness  is  indisputable  proof  of 
the  existence  of  the  soul.  The  argument  for 
personality  of  the  old  philosopher  Descartes 
as  involved  in  his  words,  “Cogito  ergo  sum,” 
“I  think;  therefore,  I  exist,”  stands  without 
rebuttal  to  this  day.  This  is  a  self-evident 
truth.  In  our  psychic  experience  our  knowl- 

[62] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

edge  of  our  own  personality  and  our  appre¬ 
hension  of  the  objective  world  in  general 
grow  up  together.  We  can  no  more  deny  the 
existence  of  the  one  than  we  can  of  the 
other.  Richardson  well  shows  in  his  Spiri¬ 
tual  Pluralism  that  the  growth  of  experience 
consists  in  action  and  reaction  between  sub¬ 
ject  and  object,  manifested  in  an  ever-in¬ 
creasing  complexity  and  differentiation  of 
the  object.  We  claim  that  the  existence  of 
the  subject  is  a  self-evident  truth,  and  that 
it  is  just  as  necessary  to  make  our  daily  ex¬ 
perience  rational  and  complete  as  is  the  ex¬ 
istence  of  the  external  world  around  us.  We 
are  aware  of  the  existence  of  our  own  per¬ 
sonality  in  every  psychic  function.  Without 
this  doctrine  there  can  be  no  complete  inter¬ 
pretation  of  experience.  When  it  is  denied, 
then  the  resulting  view  is  always  warped 
and  one-sided,  and  fails  to  give  a  complete 
integration  to  the  facts  of  our  daily  life. 
If  we  accept  this  doctrine  of  personality, 
then  we  are  only  believing  the  most  intuitive 
and  immediate  fact  of  our  being,  and  we  are 
in  a  position  to  give  to  our  experience  that 
completeness,  that  integration,  and  that  as¬ 
sured  foundation  that  it  so  much  needs. 

We  start,  then,  with  this  ultimate — the 
fact  of  human  personality.  In  postulating 
an  ultimate  we  are  taking  no  exceptional 
course.  All  psychology  starts  with  some 
ultimate.  The  materialist  postulates  the 
eternity  of  matter  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
conservation  of  energy.  The  idealist  starts 

[63] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

with  the  assumption  of  certain  categories  of 
thought.  The  Neo-Realist  takes  as  the  basis 
of  his  philosophy  the  existence  of  sense  data. 
We  see  then  that  the  Christian  psychologist 
is  not  in  an  unenviable  class  by  himself, 
when  he  begins  his  investigations  by  assum¬ 
ing  the  existence  of  an  ultimate:  the  exis¬ 
tence  of  the  human  soul.  All  of  them  start 
with  some  fundamental  assumption.  It  is 
merely  a  question  as  to  which  ultimate  is  to 
be  postulated.  I  claim  that  if  all  thinkers 
are  going  to  start  with  some  fundamental, 
that  it  is  best  to  assume  that  ultimate  that 
most  completely  and  thoroughly  satisfies  all 
of  the  facts  in  the  case.  I  further  hold  that 
the  doctrine  of  human  personality  is  the 
simplest,  most  intimately  known  of  any  of 
the  ultimates  that  have  been  postulated,  and 
that  it  best  explains  all  of  the  facts  in  the 
case.  I  further  contend  that  it  makes  explic¬ 
able  all  of  the  assumptions  of  the  other 
philosophers,  whereas  their  postulates  are  in 
no  position  to  explain  or  make  possible  any 
doctrine  of  personality.  For  example,  from 
such  assumptions  as  the  existence  of  .  sense 
data  or  of  the  presence  of  categories  of 
thought,  we  never  could  deduce  or  build  any 
kind  of  a  subject  doctrine.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  we  start  with  the  self-evident  ex¬ 
istence  of  the  ego,  then  both  sense  data  as 
being  given  to  and  experienced  by  this  per¬ 
sonality,  and  categories  of  thought  as  being 
fundamental  axioms  imbedded  in  the  soul, 
are  both  rational  and  necessary  existences. 

[64] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

It  would  seem  to  be  the  part  of  wisdom  that 
if  we  are  going  to  make  any  assumption,  that 
we  should  start  with  one  that  is  deep  and 
sufficiently  inclusive  and  strong  enough  to 
support  any  further  postulates  that  might 
have  to  be  made.  Such  an  ultimate  is  the 
existence  of  personality. 

Every  philosophy  that  is  worthy  of  the 
name  attempts  to  give  a  rational  interpreta¬ 
tion  of  our  “Here-and-now”  experience.  Now 
experience  cannot  be  interpreted  exclusively 
in  terms  of  the  objective  factors  as  the  Neo- 
Realist  attempts  to  do;  nor  exclusively  by 
means  of  the  subjective  elements  as  the 
idealist  attempts.  May  Sinclair  in  the  New 
Idealism  makes  a  noble  attempt  for  Idealism, 
but  we  feel  all  the  while  that  something  is 
lacking  in  her  explanation  of  experience. 
This  is  a  product  of  the  interaction  of  both 
the  subjective  and  the  objective  factors.  To 
use  a  mathematical  term,  experience  is  a 
function  of  both  the  objective  and  the  sub¬ 
jective  order.  In  the  subjective  order  per¬ 
sonality  is  dominant.  Yes,  this  whole  order 
is  the  product  of  personality  and  her  laws. 

Such  are  the  arguments  for  the  existence 
of  the  soul  in  man.  It  is  well  for  all  Chris¬ 
tian  workers  to  realize  that  this  tenet  is  as¬ 
sailed  by  the  New  Psychology.  Some  psy¬ 
chologists  hold  that  it  is  the  function  of 
psychology  to  study  only  cases  of  behaviour 
in  man  and  animal.  Hence  they  ignore  all 
reference  to  the  existence  or  work  of  the 

[65] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

soul.  That  is  an  outworn  religious  concept. 
Some  of  the  New  Psychologists  would  make 
man  only  a  bundle  of  instincts,  and  would 
contend  that  his  psychic  life  is  generated  by 
the  play  and  interplay  of  these.  Thus  Tan- 
sley  in  The  New  Psychology  claims  that  the 
three  dominant  instincts  in  man  are  the  self, 
the  herd,  and  the  sex  instincts.  All  man’s 
psychic  life  is  due  ultimately  to  the  inter¬ 
play  between  these  fundamental  instincts. 
When  there  is  a  conflict,  the  mind,  so  to 
speak,  is  thrown  back  upon  itself.  This  leads 
to  the  elaboration  of  the  mental  mechanism 
intervening  between  the  exciting  object  and 
the  motor  response  of  the  organism.  Hence 
the  important  complexes,  or  association  of 
mental  elements  with  a  common  emotional 
tone,  are  formed.  These  complexes  in  the 
New  Psychology  are  at  the  basis  of  man’s 
psychic  life.  We  want  to  make  it  clear  that 
in  this  scheme  of  things,  there  is  no  room 
left  for  the  existence  or  operation  of  human 
personality.  The  instincts  that  we  have  in¬ 
herited  from  the  lower  animals  are  the 
dynamic  concepts  in  all  psychology,  and  are 
responsible  for  all  of  our  acts.  These  New 
Psychologists  would  deny  absolutely  that 
man’s  soul  is  created  in  the  image  of  God. 
Man,  in  his  psychic  life,  is  merely  a  highly 
evolved  animal.  McDougall  in  his  Social 
Psychology  says,  “It  is  only  a  comparative 
and  evolutionary  psychology  that  can  provide 
the  needed  basis ;  and  this  could  not  be 
created  before  the  work  of  Darwin  had  con- 

tee] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

vinced  men  of  the  continuity  of  human  with 
animal  evolution  as  regards  all  bodily  char¬ 
acters,  and  had  prepared  the  way  for  the 
quickly  following  recognition  of  the  similar 
continuity  of  man’s  mental  evolution  with 
that  of  the  animal  world.”  He  further  argues 
that  among  the  false  assumptions  of  the  past 
to  be  given  up  is  the  old  conception  of  a 
special  faculty  of  moral  intuition,  a  con¬ 
science,  a  moral  sense  or  instinct.  When  we 
come  to  the  study  of  psychology,  we  see  more 
clearly  than  anywhere  else  the  destructive 
results  of  Naturalistic  Evolution.  As  long 
as  evolution  is  confined  in  its  operation,  to 
the  building  up  of  man’s  body,  the  theologian 
being  no  professional  biologist,  is  not  fully 
aware  of  its  import.  But  when  evolution 
begins  its  work  in  the  soul  of  man,  and  we 
see  it  enter  the  very  holy  of  holies  of  divine 
truth  and  demolish  the  doctrine  of  per¬ 
sonality,  so  dear  to  the  Christian  thinker, 
then  we  begin  to  realize  the  full  effects  of 
its  ravages.  Evolution  is  now  working  in 
a  field  that  the  Christian  thinker  under¬ 
stands.  It  is  well  for  the  Christian  to  realize 
fully  the  vital  differences  to  his  faith  aris¬ 
ing  from  bodily  or  biological  evolution  and 
from  psychic  evolution.  As  to  biological 
evolution,  of  course  it  is  true  from  an  ab¬ 
stract  standpoint  that  the  creator  might  have 
used  evolution  as  a  method  of  creation  and 
providence.  But  unfortunately  for  this  com¬ 
promise  theory,  science  is  not  formulated  by 
the  laws  of  logic;  and  it  is  contrary  to  the 

[67] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

whole  genius  of  modern  science  that  God 
would  have  used  one  method  in  the  creation 
of  man’s  body,  and  then  have  intervened  and 
supernaturally  given  him  a  soul.  If  there  is 
one  antipathy  that  modern  science  possesses 
above  all  others  it  is  a  deep  opposition  to 
supernaturalism.  It  is  not  in  the  sphere  of 
bodily  evolution  but  in  psychic  evolution  that 
modern  science  does  most  damage  to  the 
historic  faith.  Writers  like  Robinson  in  The 
Mind  in  The  Making,  Humphrey  in  The  Story 
of  Man’s  Mind,  and  Hobhouse  in  Mind  in 
Evolution,  have  laboured  heroically  to  prove 
that  man’s  mind  is  evolved  from  the  lower 
animals  just  as  is  his  body.  Hobhouse  holds 
that  intelligence,  or  the  ability  to  correlate 
past  experiences  with  subsequent  actions, 
evolves  through  four  stages.  First,  there  is 
the  stage  of  reflex  action  and  inarticulate 
correlation.  Secondly,  there  is  the  process 
by  which  the  perceptual  order  is  formed,  and 
practical,  concrete  judgments  are  made. 
Thirdly,  there  is  the  rise  of  conceptual  think¬ 
ing  in  which  the  common  characters  that  run 
through  perceptual  experience  are  extracted. 
Fourthly,  there  comes  the  rational  system 
or  correlation  of  correlations,  in  which  the 
ultimate  goal  is  the  synthesis  of  reality  as  a 
whole.  Such  is  the  method  of  psychic  evolu¬ 
tion.  Now  Christians  may  differ  as  to  the 
effect  on  Theology  of  biological  evolution. 
But  let  me  make  this  clear:  THE  DOC¬ 
TRINE  OF  PSYCHIC  EVOLUTION  IS 
UTTERLY  DESTRUCTIVE  OF  THE  BE- 

[68] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

LIEF  IN  PERSONALITY;  AND  NO 
VALID  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  HUMAN 
SOUL  CAN  BE  BUILT  UPON  ITS 
TENETS. 

Let  us  see  the  issue  clearly:  this  new 
evolutionary  psychology  destroys  human 
personality.  Man  is  a  bundle  of  instincts. 
As  McDougall  says  in  his  Social  Psychology, 
“The  human  mind  has  certain  innate  or  in¬ 
herited  tendencies  which  are  the  essential 
springs  or  motive  powers  of  all  thought  and 
action,  whether  individual  or  collective,  and 
are  the  bases  from  which  the  character  and 
will  of  individuals  and  of  nations  are  gradu¬ 
ally  developed  under  the  guidance  of  the  in¬ 
tellectual  faculties.”  Let  us  notice  just  how 
complete  personality,  and  all  the  attributes 
of  a  being  created  in  the  image  of  God  are 
annihilated  by  naturalistic  psychic  evolution. 
There  is  no  separate  faculty  of  conscience, 
but  it  is  resolved  into  an  emotion.  The 
moral  law  has  no  absolute  validity,  but  as 
Tansley  so  well  shows  in  his  New  Psycho¬ 
logy,  is  a  code,  based  on  the  demands  of  the 
herd  instinct  with  all  of  the  defects  and  limi¬ 
tations  shared  by  all  codes  built  up  on  pure 
expediency.  Tansley  tries  to  show  that  the 
moral  law  is  primarily  the  rule  of  the  herd 
to  regulate  the  life  of  its  members.  “The 
herd’s  moral  law,  like  its  other  characters, 
is  subject,  of  course,  to  natural  selection, 
and  therefore,  in  a  general  way,  is  useful  to 
the  herd.”  Marriage  is  not  ordained  of  God, 
[69] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

but  is  only  a  convenience  based  on  the  herd 
or  sex  instincts.  We  are  beginning  to  see 
just  how  completely  naturalistic  evolution  as 
operative  in  the  New  Psychology  demolishes 
the  doctrine  of  personality,  and  all  of  the 
holy  laws  applicable  to  a  being  created  in  the 
image  of  God.  Not  only  are  personality  and 
its  basic  laws  imperiled,  but  even  religion 
itself,  as  we  know  it,  is  in  grave  danger  of 
destruction.  Tansley  in  the  New  Psychology 
speaks  of  a  process  known  as  Projection 
which  “consists  in  attributing  parts  of  the 
mental  content  to  outside  entities.,,  He  states 
that  in  a  primitive  state  of  culture  man  pro¬ 
jects  parts  of  his  own  personality  upon  the 
forces  of  nature  and  thus  personifies  and 
often  defies  them.  He  shows  how  finally, 
“God  then  becomes  the  centre  of  the  indi¬ 
vidual’s  own  struggle  towards  unification, 
the  repository  of  his  deepest  hopes,  the  con¬ 
fident  of  his  deepest  troubles.”  In  other 
words,  it  would  seem  that  religion  is  the 
projection  outward  of  man’s  unrealized  de¬ 
sires  in  his  natural,  instinctive  life.  God 
would  seem  to  be  a  useful  projection  of  the 
mind  of  man,  that  aids  him  in  his  struggles 
with  the  forces  of  nature  and  with  the  world 
about  him.  Tansley  has  stated  in  His  New 
Psychology,  “It  cannot  be  doubted  that  God 
has  been  a  necessity  to  the  human  race,  that 
He  is  still  a  necessity,  and  will  long  con¬ 
tinue  to  be.  We  begin  to  see  that  the  New 
Psychology  as  it  is  based  on  naturalistic  evo¬ 
lution  is  utterly  destructive  of  religion  in 

[70] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  evangelical  sense.  Basing,  as  it  does,  all 
moral  and  social  values  on  the  herd  and  sex 
instincts,  it  has  no  real  necessity  in  its 
scheme  for  the  existence  of  a  God  to  impose 
His  Holy  Will  on  man,  but  can  readily  make 
society  and  its  demands  take  the  place  of 
the  Divine  Being.  We  might  say  that  to  the 
New  Psychology  society  is  its  god.  Religion 
is  needed  only  to  make  this  world  more  liv¬ 
able,  to  console  man  in  his  disappointments 
here,  to  conserve  social  values.  Morality  is 
all  we  need;  and  that  can  be  generated  by 
the  power  of  the  herd  and  sex  instincts  with¬ 
out  a  direct  revelation  from  God.  As  Henry 
C.  Sheldon  pertinently  asks  in  his  article  on 
“The  Psychology  of  Religion  Interrogated,” 
in  the  Princeton  Review  for  January,  1922, 
“Is  there  good  historic  warrant  for  defining 
religion  as  the  consciousness  of  social  values, 
or  as  the  recognition  and  pursuit  of  social 
values,  thus  leaving  out  of  the  definition  all 
explicit  reference  to  a  felt  relationship  to  a 
Higher  Power?”  Modern  Psychology  would 
reply  that  we  have  ample  warrant  so  to  de¬ 
fine  religion,  and  that  we  can  construct  all 
of  the  morality  and  religion  we  need  with¬ 
out  believing  in  the  objective  existence  of  the 
Supreme  Being.  He  may  exist  as  the  pro¬ 
jection  outward  of  man’s  unrealized  desires 
and  frustrated  hopes,  but  that  is  all  the  ex¬ 
istence  that  is  demanded  for  Him. 

We  begin  to  see  the  logic  of  naturalistic 
psychic  evolution  as  applied  to  the  problem 
of  personality  and  its  related  laws.  If  we 

[71] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

deny  that  man  is  created  in  the  divine  image 
and  insist  that  he  is  only  a  bundle  of  animal 
instincts,  then  real  personality  is  destroyed, 
and  with  it  all  moral  and  religious  life  worthy 
of  the  name.  The  alternative  is  clear-cut: 
either  man  is  created  in  the  divine  image, 
with  a  real  personality  and  subject  to  the 
will  of  his  Divine  Creator ;  or  man  is  evolved 
in  his  mental  and  moral  life  upward  from 
the  lower  animals,  with  certain  primary  in¬ 
stincts  productive  of  his  whole  psychic  life, 
but  with  no  real  self  or  soul. 

A  valid  doctrine  of  human  personality  is 
most  essential  to  a  sound  psychology  of  re¬ 
ligion.  So  many  of  the  popular  books  on 
psychology  that  essay  to  do  the  laudable  work 
of  showing  man  how  to  conquer  fear  through 
a  dynamic,  militant  faith  achieve  this  result 
by  breaking  down  the  distinction  between 
God  and  man.  Thus  Gibson  in  The  Faith 
that  Overcomes  the  World  says  that  we 
should  pray  that  the  victory  is  ours  because 
we  are  one  with  the  one  Power  in  the  uni¬ 
verse,  God.  A  one-sided  insistence  on  the 
divine  immanence  is  the  fundamental  postu¬ 
late  of  most  of  the  modern  psychology  with 
any  spiritual  tendency.  We  must  hold  fast 
to  the  notion  that  man’s  personality  is  created 
by  God,  not  merely  indwelt  by  Him,  and  that 
it  is  separate  from  the  Divine  Personality. 
As  often  happens,  the  doctrine  of  personality 
is  jeopardized  not  only  by  some  teachers  of 
liberal  Christianity,  but  also  by  some  sup¬ 
posedly  ultra-orthodox  Christians.  I  refer  to 

[72] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

certain  advocates  of  the  Victorious  Life 
movement  who  giving  a  quietistic  interpreta¬ 
tion  of  Christianity  insist  that  we  must  cease 
trying  to  think,  feel,  or  will,  but  must  let 
Christ  think,  feel,  and  will  through  us.  The 
Christian  today  must  guard  tenaciously  the 
doctrine  of  human  personality,  and  must  re¬ 
sist  every  attempt  whether  from  liberal  or 
from  hvper-orthodox  to  break  down  the  dis¬ 
tinction  between  God  and  man.  Of  any 
popular  psychic  work  today  it  is  well  to  ask 
two  basic  questions.  In  the  first  place,  “what 
is  your  doctrine  of  personality?  Is  man  a 
distinct  and  separate  creation  by  God,  or  is 
he  only  an  emanation  or  part  of  the  Divine 
Being?”  In  the  second  place,  I  would  ask, 
“What  is  your  doctrine  of  sin?  Is  it  rebel¬ 
lion  against  God  and  His  Holy  Law,  or  is  it 
only  a  limitation?”  These  questions  are  the 
acid  tests  that  any  reader  should  apply  to 
the  whole  hosts  of  modern  books  on  religious 
psychology  that  essay  to  bring  peace  and 
power  to  man. 

It  is  a  denial  of  the  Divine  transcendence 
and  a  one-sided  emphasis  on  the  divine  im¬ 
manence  that  constitutes  the  challenge  today 
to  personality.  Real  personality,  whether  in 
God  or  man,  demands  both  transcendence  and 
immanence.  God  must  be  present  in  the 
processes  of  this  world,  but  He  must  also 
be  above  and  distinct  from  them  and  able 
to  act  independently  of  them — else  He  has 
no  real  personality.  Man’s  soul  must  be  in 
the  mechanical  processes  of  his  nervous  sys- 

[73] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

tem — but  it  must  also  be  able  to  transcend 
them,  and  to  grasp  these  processes  in  a  unity 
that  is  essential  to  all  thought. 

It  is  no  accident  that  before  God  in  His 
Word  reveals  anything  about  sin,  salvation, 
or  even  about  His  own  blessed  nature,  He 
first  declares  the  glorious  truth  that  man 
is  created  in  His  image.  This  order  of  reve¬ 
lation  is  not  arbitrary,  but  is  so  manifested 
by  design.  The  tenet  that  man  possesses  a 
real  personality  is  really  the  foundation  stone 
to  the  doctrines  of  Christian  salvation.  If 
man  has  not  been  created  in  His  image,  has 
no  real  personality,  but  is  only  the  result 
of  animal  instincts  acting  and  interacting  in 
his  psychic  life,  then  such  terms  as  the  fall, 
sin,  the  moral  law,  and  the  history  of  redemp¬ 
tion  have  absolutely  no  meaning  for  us.  Upon 
the  foundation  stone  which  declares  that  man 
has  a  soul  is  built  the  wonderful  superstruc¬ 
ture  of  the  doctrines  of  Christian  salvation. 
If  the  basic  doctrine  of  human  personality  is 
in  jeopardy,  it  would  seem  that  the  whole 
magnificent  structure  of  redemption  is  im¬ 
perilled.  Having  stated  the  fact  that  God 
exists  and  is  creator  of  the  world,  the  Bible 
next  reveals  that  man  is  created  in  His 
image.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the  fact  that 
man  has  a  personality  that  is  created  in  the 
Divine  image  is  just  as  truly  a  revealed  truth 
as  the  glorious  doctrines  of  the  deity  of 
Christ,  of  the  Trinity,  and  of  the  Atonement. 
This  truth  that  man  has  been  created  in  the 
divine  likeness  ought  to  be  clear  to  man  from 

[74] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

natural  revelation,  but  sin  and  a  false  philo¬ 
sophy  have  so  blinded  his  eyes  that  he  has 
lost  sight  of  the  doctrine  and  needs  to  go 
back  to  the  glorious  revelation  in  the  Book 
to  learn  it  afresh.  If  the  Bible  places  the 
revelation  as  to  the  nature  of  personality 
right  at  the  beginning,  we  should  follow  in 
its  footsteps,  and  accentuate  the  truth  that 
man  has  a  soul  created  in  the  divine  likeness 
as  the  foundation  stone  of  all  our  Christian 
thinking.  Let  us  remember  that  if  this 
doctrine  is  rejected,  then  all  that  we  hold 
dear  in  our  Christian  system  perishes  with 
it.  This  is  the  first  line  of  defence  to  the 
Christian  system.  If  it  falls  before  the  as¬ 
saults  of  Satan,  then  it  is  comparatively  easy 
for  him  to  storm  the  allied  truths  that  deal 
with  sin,  the  law,  and  human  redemption. 


[75] 


Chapter  IV. 


Some  Tried  Principles 

IN'  the  preceding  chapter  we  tried  to  make 
it  clear  that  at  the  basis  of  any  sound 
psychology  is  the  doctrine  of  an  enduring 
personality.  Having  laid  the  groundwork, 
we  are  now  in  position  to  go  more  into  detail 
in  a  practical  study  of  the  challenge  that 
modern  psychology  makes  as  to  the  function¬ 
ing  of  that  personality.  We  will  begin  with 
a  study  of 


HABIT 

What  is  a  habit?  Professor  James  defines 
it  as  follows:  “An  acquired  habit  from  the 
physiological  point  of  view,  is  nothing  but  a 
new  pathway  of  discharge  formed  in  the 
brain,  by  which  certain  incoming  currents 
ever  after  tend  to  escape.”  In  habit  we  are 
studying  the  more  mechanical  side  of  psy¬ 
chic  life.  We  all  know  that  the  law  of  habit 
is  very  potent  in  the  religious  life.  Then 
how  important  are  good  religious  habits! 
The  practice  of  regular  church  attendance, 
of  systematic  reading  of  the  Bible  and 
Prayer  every  day,  of  proportionate  giving 
of  our  money  to  God,  of  profanity  and  purity 
— these  practices  are  largely  the  results  of 
religious  habits  formed  in  youth. 


[76] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Now  the  Sunday  School  has  the  scholar 
under  its  care  during  those  years  when  the 
character  is  plastic — and  before  the  great 
grooves  of  habit  have  been  set.  Let  it  labour 
that  the  pathways  shall  be  cut  in  the  right 
direction — in  the  direction  of  righteousness 
and  not  of  sin.  In  connection  with  the  for¬ 
mation  of  early  religious  habits  we  are  nat¬ 
urally  brought  to  the  issue  as  to  what  should 
be  the  nature  of  early  religious  education. 
Should  the  catechism  and  its  dogmatic  in¬ 
struction  be  abolished?  Should  a  shorter 
Bible  be  presented  to  the  children?  Coe  in 
a  Social  Theory  of  Religious  Education  with 
its  goal  of  the  Democracy  of  God  on  earth 
insists  that  dogmatic  instruction  should  be 
supplanted  by  social  teachings.  The  practice 
of  using  the  catechisms  is  challenged  today. 
The  two-fold  grounds  on  which  this  challenge 
is  made  are:  the  denial  of  the  doctrine  that 
the  child  is  in  a  state  of  original  sin,  and 
the  denial  that  there  is  any  final  and  infalli¬ 
ble  revelation  that  can  be  forced  on  the 
child.  Those  of  us  who  still  cherish  these 
old  doctrines  believe  that  since  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  final,  authoritative  truth  in  re¬ 
ligion  that  the  sooner  it  can  be  implanted 
in  suitable  form  through  the  catechisms  in 
the  child  mind,  that  the  child  will  be  all 
the  better  fitted  not  only  for  the  religious 
and  moral  duties  of  life  but  also  for  those 
social  obligations  so  dear  to  the  heart  of  the 
modern  liberal. 

[77] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


This  brings  us  to  the  subject  of 
CONVERSION 

During  recent  years  psychologists  have 
made  quite  a  study  of  the  phenomena  of  con¬ 
version.  Especially  has  this  been  done  by 
Professor  James  in  his  Varieties  of  Reli¬ 
gious  Experience,  and  by  Mr.  Starbuck  in 
his  Psychology  of  Religion.  These  men  have 
claimed  that  conversion,  instead  of  being  an 
abnormal,  is  a  natural  process,  and  that  it  is 
just  as  amenable  to  the  laws  of  psychology 
as  any  other  psychic  fact.  They  have  made 
an  elaborate  study  of  cases  of  conversion, 
especially  from  the  inductive  standpoint ;  and 
have  tried  to  classify  the  various  principles 
at  work  in  conversion,  to  group  the  various 
religious  types,  and  to  formulate  definite 
laws  regulative  of  that  period.  Now  un¬ 
doubtedly  these  men  have  done  a  valuable 
work  in  their  minute  study  of  conversions, 
and  undoubtedly  they  have  announced  some 
most  valuable  laws.  The  only  danger  is  that 
they  will  carry  too  far  the  idea  of  the  opera¬ 
tion  of  psychical  law  in  conversion,  will  over¬ 
look  the  divine,  supernatural  side  in  the  great 
process,  and  will  end  by  making  it  a  purely 
naturalistic  act.  After  this  word  of  caution 
it  will  surely  repay  us  to  study  some  of  the 
results  of  their  labours.  Mr.  Starbuck,  after 
elaborate  inductions,  says  that  conversion 
does  not  occur  with  the  same  frequency  at 
all  periods  of  life.  It  belongs  almost  exclu- 

[78] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

sively  to  the  years  between  10  and  25.  “One 
may  say  that  if  conversion  has  not  occurred 
before  20,  the  chances  are  small  that  it  will 
ever  be  experienced.”  He  says  that  there 
are  two  types  of  conversion.  One  is  accom¬ 
panied  with  a  violent  sense  of  sin,  and  the 
other  with  a  feeling  of  incompleteness,  a 
struggle  after  a  larger  life,  and  a  desire  for 
spiritual  illumination.  He  contends  that 
conversion  is  distinctly  an  adolescent  pheno¬ 
menon.  “Back  of  the  whole  adolescent  de¬ 
velopment,  and  central  in  it,  is  the  birth  of 
a  new  and  larger  spiritual  consciousness. 
Expressed  in  psychological  terms  the  adole¬ 
scent  movement  consists  in  the  commence¬ 
ment  of  the  functioning  of  the  higher  in¬ 
tellectual  centres  in  the  brain.”  Such  are 
some  of  the  laws  that  Mr.  Starbuck  states. 

Surely  he  has  given  some  valuable  laws 
and  hints  to  the  religious  worker.  First  of 
all,  there  is  the  most  important  fact,  that  if 
conversion  does  not  occur  before  the  age  of 
twenty,  it  will  not  likely  occur  at  all.  Most 
personal  workers  have  realized  this  long  ago, 
even  before  it  was  given  a  psychological 
statement.  Surely  it  is  a  most  solemn  fact  to 
us  all  that  there  is  a  certain  time  when  con¬ 
version  will  likely  take  place ;  and  that  if  that 
period  passes,  while  we  must  never  limit  the 
power  of  God’s  Grace,  yet  the  likelihood  is 
that  a  profession  will  never  be  made.  The 
important  fact  is  that  the  Sunday  School 
teacher  has  control  of  the  child  just  at  the 
very  critical  period,  when  conversion  is  likely 
[79] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

to  occur.  Surely  a  knowledge  of  this  law 
should  prompt  the  conscientious  teacher  to 
labour  indefatigably  to  persuade  his  pupils 
to  accept  Jesus  Christ,  and  to  warn  them  of 
the  great  danger  of  putting  off  this  decision 
from  time  to  time. 

Now,  in  general,  the  modern  psychology  of 
religion  challenges  the  old,  orthodox  idea  of 
conversion.  Conversion  is  due  to  the  emer¬ 
gence  of  the  social  consciousness  through  the 
idea  of  sex.  Thus  sympathy,  co-operation, 
and  sociability  are  developed.  It  is  unsci¬ 
entific  to  teach  that  the  religious  nature  is 
miraculously  implanted.  Conversion  must 
give  way  to  illumination  and  education,  in 
oder  that  the  innate,  divine  tendencies  of  the 
child  mind  may  be  brought  to  fruition. 

In  the  next  place  we  would  consider  the 
principle  of 


APPERCEPTION 

We  may  define  apperception  as  that  pro¬ 
cess  by  which  a  new  experience  entering  the 
field  of  consciousness  is  incorporated  into  our 
existing  mass  of  ideas.  In  this  act  the  ten¬ 
dency  is  for  the  new  idea  to  be  assimilated 
in  terms  that  we  already  possess  in  our  stock 
of  thoughts,  emotions,  and  experiences  in 
general.  As  William  James  says,  “It  is  obvi¬ 
ous  that  the  things  which  a  given  experience 
will  suggest  to  a  man  depend  on  what  Mr. 
Lewis  calls  his  entire  psychostatical  condi- 

[80] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

tion,  his  nature  and  stock  of  ideas,  or,  in 
other  words,  his  character,  habits,  memory, 
education,  previous  experience,  and  momen¬ 
tary  mood.”  Such  is  the  doctrine  of  apper¬ 
ception.  If  the  human  mind  tends  to  assimi¬ 
late  new  experiences  in  terms  of  its  present 
store  of  ideas,  then  if  the  religious  worker  is 
trying  to  introduce  new  ideas  into  the  mind 
of  the  child,  it  is  necessary  that  he  should 
know  something  of  the  present  stock  of  ex¬ 
periences  which  the  child  possesses.  Let  him 
try  to  get  the  child  viewpoint.  He  should  not 
expect  to  introduce  religion  into  his  life  by 
means  of  antiquated  theological  forms  or 
trite  terms  of  “piosity”  that  have  no  meaning 
for  the  young  person.  If  he  would  be  a  suc¬ 
cessful  religious  worker,  he  should  explore 
the  secrets  of  the  child  mind,  see  what  he  is 
thinking,  examine  the  world  of  phantasy  and 
fairies  which  he  has  created,  note  his  play 
life  and  his  play  wants,  and  then  should  try 
to  adapt  his  religious  instruction  to  this  stock 
of  experiences  which  are  locked  up  in  the 
young  soul. 

It  might  be  that  the  follower  of  the  old 
faith  could  answer  the  challenge  of  modern 
liberalism  to  all  dogma  and  catechetical  in¬ 
struction  by  a  wise  use  of  the  law  of  apper¬ 
ception.  The  modern  mind  has  its  own  atti¬ 
tudes  and  modes  of  thought  and  prevailing 
complexes — and  attention  should  be  paid  to 
these  in  modern  preaching  and  dogmatic  dis¬ 
cussion.  The  old  truth  is  eternal,  but  it  can 
be  couched  in  modern  phrases.  The  average 

[81] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Christian  today  is  not  interested  in  the  philo¬ 
sophical  verbiage  of  the  fourth  or  sixteenth 
century.  If  the  law  of  apperception  as  re¬ 
lated  to  religious  truth  were  wisely  studied 
and  followed  by  the  orthodox  camp,  perhaps 
the  challenge  of  the  liberal  might  be  largely 
met  by  disarming  him  right  at  the  start. 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  study  what  the 
older  psychologists  called  the  faculties  of  the 
soul.  They  held  that  the  human  personality 
is  a  unity  that  thinks,  and  feels,  and  wills. 
Now  modern  psychology  laughs  at  this  crude 
faculty  psychology.  But  it  cannot  get  away 
from  the  realities  underlying  these  terms. 
The  realities  of  thought,  emotion,  and  voli¬ 
tion  are  there — and  we  had  just  as  well  use 
the  term  “faculty”  to  describe  them  as  any 
other.  Of  course,  we  do  not  mean  that  the 
soul  is  divided  into  three  air-tight  compart¬ 
ments,  but  that  the  whole  personality  is 
present  in  every  act  of  thinking,  feeling,  and 
willing.  Three  great  philosophies  of  religion 
have  been  based  on  each  of  these  faculties  as 
exercised  in  religion.  Let  us  note: 

THE  REASON 

On  the  operation  of  the  reason  in  religion 
has  been  built  the  great  philosophy  of  IN- 
TELLECTUALISM.  Now  modern  psychol¬ 
ogy  challenges  the  use  of  the  reason  in  re¬ 
ligion.  This  distrust  of  its  use  in  religion  is 
based  on  its  abuse  by  two  extreme  camps : 
the  enemy  of  the  old  faith,  the  rationalist, 

[82] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

and  the  friend  of  orthodoxy,  the  Protestant 
scholastic.  The  first  would  make  the  human 
mind  the  source  and  measure  of  religious 
truth.  A  man  should  believe  only  what  is 
absolutely  rational  and  intelligible  to  him. 
The  modern  mind  has  little  patience  with  the 
tenets  of  the  old  rationalism.  It  knows  full 
well  that  the  human  mind  is  finite,  and  that 
limitation  is  incapable  of  apprehending  abso¬ 
lute  truth ;  and  it  further  knows  that  some 
kind  of  a  blight  hangs  over  the  reason, 
whether  we  call  it  a  bad  complex,  a  repressed 
conflict,  or  just  plain  old  sin.  Then  the  Prot¬ 
estant  scholastic  has  undoubtedly  brought  the 
use  of  the  reason  in  religion  into  disrepute. 
While  he  would  not  make  the  intellect  the 
source  of  truth,  yet  he  claims  that  reason 
must  endeavour  to  harmonize  absolutely  all 
of  the  great  truths  of  revelation.  I  have  seen 
men  by  means  of  a  mathematical  equation 
try  to  harmonize  the  great  doctrines  of  di¬ 
vine  sovereignty  and  human  free  agency. 
Our  modern  mind  has  little  use  for  such  arid 
scholasticism.  Now  for  these  and  other  rea¬ 
sons  the  use  of  the  reason  in  religion,  and  its 
product,  doctrine,  are  in  disrepute  with  the 
modern  world.  The  liberal  thinker  stresses 
doctrine  rather  than  life.  He  is  interested  in 
social  service  rather  than  in  dogmatics.  Has 
not  Ellwood  told  us  in  The  Reconstruction  of 
Religion  that  before  the  church  can  begin 
her  great  task,  the  socialization  of  the  world, 
she  must  rid  herself  of  tradition  and  subordi¬ 
nate  theology  to  the  social  sciences?  Has 
[83] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

not  Nolan  R.  Best  written  on  The  Unpopu¬ 
larity  of  Theology,  and  insisted  that  this  is 
due  to  her  partisan  insistence  on  distinctions 
in  dogma  which  ought  to  be  given  up  in  the 
interest  of  unity?  As  to  the  objection  to 
theology  that  she  makes  vexatious  distinc¬ 
tions,  I  would  reply  that  it  is  the  very  func¬ 
tion  of  reason  to  make  distinctions.  If  we 
are  to  have  no  clear-cut  analyses  and  dif¬ 
ferentiations  in  religion,  but  only  a  hazy, 
indefinite,  blunt  contact  with  reality,  then 
let  us  go  back  to  mysticism  or  to  the  use  of 
the  feelings  as  the  interpreting  faculty  in 
religion.  It  strikes  me  that  scientists  and 
secular  thinkers  in  general  are  manifestly 
unfair  in  their  objection  to  the  making  of 
distinctions  in  religion.  They  surely  make 
clear-cut  distinctions  in  science  and  in  psy¬ 
chology.  They  would  surely  decry  the  en¬ 
trance  of  a  tyro  or  a  dilettente  in  science 
who,  rejecting  all  of  the  authoritative 
thought  of  the  past,  persisted  in  forming  his 
own  conclusions,  however  bizarre  they  might 
be,  and  who  when  reprimanded  by  authori¬ 
ties  on  the  subject,  persisted  in  saying  that 
finely  spun  distinctions  should  not  count  any¬ 
how,  and  should  not  be  interjected  to  disturb 
the  harmony  of  the  meeting.  But  the  day 
has  come  when  a  man  can  leave  his  own  field 
of  sociology  or  psychology,  enter  the  field  of 
religion,  reject  all  of  the  deliverances  of  the 
past  ages  on  theology,  and  make  his  own 
bizarre  interpretations.  Surely  if  we  wish 
to  find  the  truth  in  any  line,  we  must  make 

[84] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

distinctions  in  thought.  One  of  our  literary 
men  has  objected  that  in  the  deliberations 
of  the  Council  of  Nice  in  regard  to  the  Trin¬ 
ity,  our  fathers  fought  a  theological  battle 
over  a  diphthong.  Yes,  but  that  little  diph¬ 
thong  was  not  inconsequential.  It  repre¬ 
sented  the  difference  between  Unitarianism 
and  evangelical  truth,  between  legalism  and 
salvation  by  Grace,  between  the  power  and 
peace  of  a  supernatural  religion  which  thous¬ 
ands  hold  dear  and  mere  naturalism.  Give 
us  more  clear-cut  distinctions  like  that. 

What  the  world  needs  today  is  more  doc¬ 
trine  in  religion.  We  demand  more  of  a 
mighty  grappling  by  the  reason  with  the 
things  of  eternity.  Because  the  world  has 
neglected  Christian  doctrine  for  a  century, 
she  is  paying  for  it  in  lower  standards  of 
morals  and  social  practice.  Has  not  the  Old 
Book  told  us  that  as  a  man  thinketh  in  his 
heart,  so  is  he?  Auguste  Comte  has  said  that 
in  man’s  evolution  he  has  passed  through 
the  three  stages  of  theological,  metaphysi¬ 
cal,  and  scientific  thought.  Of  course,  the 
implication  is  that  we  have  left  behind  years 
ago  the  superstitious  age  of  dogma.  After 
a  century  during  which  this  program  has 
been  partially  tried  out,  I  would  correct 
Comte’s  order  by  this  one:  the  theological, 
the  metaphysical,  and  the  anarchistic.  I 
would  further  say  that  this  is  an  anti-climax 
rather  than  a  climax,  as  Comte  taught  in  his 
theory.  We  have  sown  the  wind  of  a  rejec¬ 
tion  of  theology;  we  have  reaped  the  whirl- 

[85] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

wind  of  corrupted  morals  and  debased  social 
practice.  We  have  sown  rationalism,  natur¬ 
alism,  higher  criticism ;  we  have  reaped 
Nietzsche,  pagan  ethics,  and  Bolshevism.  It 
was  no  accident  that  Nietzsche,  with  his  doc¬ 
trine  of  the  super-man,  and  Darwin,  with  his 
survival  of  the  fittest  and  the  ethics  of  the 
jungle  laid  hold  of  Germany’s  national  life. 
That  ethical  catastrophe  did  not  strike  as  a 
bolt  out  of  a  clear  sky.  The  way  was  pre¬ 
pared  by  a  rejection  of  authority  in  religion, 
by  a  denial  of  fundamental  Christian  doc¬ 
trines,  and  by  a  subjectivism  in  doctrine  that 
made  every  man’s  mind  a  law  unto  itself. 
When  all  authority  was  broken  in  doctrine, 
and  every  man  became  a  law  unto  himself, 
it  was  perfectly  natural  that  this  same  rejec¬ 
tion  of  authority  and  utter  subjectivism 
should  spread  to  the  field  of  ethics.  In  other 
words,  the  rejection  of  vital  Christian  doc¬ 
trine  was  the  cause  of  anarchy  in  morals  and 
in  government.  A  man  first  thinks  crook¬ 
edly,  and  then  acts  crookedly.  The  result  is 
not  immediate  with  a  nation,  for  a  genera¬ 
tion  may  for  a  while  run  on  the  borrowed 
moral  assets  from  the  past.  Our  age  is  suf¬ 
fering  today  from  a  repudiation  of  the  great 
doctrines.  We  need  not  less  but  more  the¬ 
ology  of  the  right  sort.  Writers  today,  like 
Bousfield  in  The  Omnipotent  Self,  are  plead¬ 
ing  for  directive  as  opposed  to  mere  phan¬ 
tasy  thinking  as  a  cure  for  what  he  calls 
Narcissism,  or  selfish  pride,  so-called  from 
Narcissus,  who  in  Greek  mythology,  saw  his 

[86] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

reflection  in  a  spring  and  fell  in  love  with  it. 
Robinson,  in  Mind  in  the  Making,  urges  cre¬ 
ative  thinking  in  distinction  from  our  sav¬ 
age  or  medieval  mind  as  the  solvent  of  all 
our  ills.  I  contend  that  it  is  more  directive 
thinking  about  the  things  of  the  Spirit,  more 
systematic  grappling  with  the  fundamental 
revelation  from  God  that  the  world  needs. 
What  is  theology?  Is  it  a  “Bugaboo”  at 
which  the  plain  man  should  shy?  It  is  noth¬ 
ing  but  plain,  common-sense,  systematic 
thinking  about  the  matters  of  divine  revela¬ 
tion.  Cannot  a  man  be  saved  who  never 
heard  of  systematic  theology?  Surely  he 
can,  just  as  a  man  can  drive  his  car  without 
knowing  the  difference  between  the  carbu¬ 
retor  and  the  differential.  But  one  thing  is 
certain:  if  he  knows  something  about  the 
mechanism  of  his  car,  he  can  enjoy  the  run¬ 
ning  of  it  all  the  more,  and  surely  if  it  gets 
out  of  commission,  he  is  ail  the  better  quali¬ 
fied  to  fix  it.  Thus  a  sound  knowledge  of 
Christian  doctrine  will  enable  the  average 
Christian  all  the  more  to  enjoy  his  salvation, 
and  it  will  prepare  him  all  the  better  to  meet 
and  combat  the  heresies,  or  doctrinal  mis¬ 
haps,  that  he  will  meet  by  the  way. 

Having  noted  the  operation  of  the  reason 
in  religion,  let  us  now  consider  some  more 
or  less  closely  allied  functioning  of  the  soul. 
This  brings  us  to  the  subject  of 

[87] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


ATTENTION 

In  all  our  mental  life  there  are  few  facts 
more  important  than  this.  All  teachers  have 
faced  the  problem  of  the  securing  and  hold¬ 
ing  the  attention  of  the  scholars.  Especially 
is  this  a  problem  in  religious  training.  What 
is  the  psychological  basis  of  attention?  Mr. 
Angell,  of  all  the  psychologists,  it  seems  to 
me,  has  defined  it  best.  He  says  in  his  Psy¬ 
chology  that  the  field  of  consciousness  is  ap¬ 
parently  like  a  vidual  field.  But  there  is 
always  a  focal  point  to  this  field  with  a  mar¬ 
gin  of  objects  around  it — and  this  focal  point 
which  reveals  the  momentary  activity  of  the 
mind  is  what  we  mean  by  the  fact  of  atten¬ 
tion.  It  is  a  strange  thing — this  matter  of 
the  attention.  The  child  goes  into  the  Sun¬ 
day  School — and  around  it  is  a  discrete  mass 
of  objects  of  various  and  sundry  kinds  to 
which  it  can  give  attention.  Why  does  it 
hold  its  attention  to  some  objects,  and  not 
to  others  ?  I  believe  that  the  actuating  prin¬ 
ciple  in  all  attention  is  the  law  of  interest. 
WE  ATTEND  TO  THOSE  THINGS  IN 
WHICH  WE  ARE  INTERESTED.  It  is 
the  same  world  into  which  we  all  go — the 
unbeliever  and  the  Christian — but  the  former 
sees  only  selfishness,  money,  and  dirt;  while 
the  latter  discerns  higher  spiritual  values, 
the  obligations  of  the  moral  law,  and  God. 
It  is  the  same  world — but  it  is  the  law  of 
interest  that  guides  the  one  to  see  evil  and 
the  other  good.  If  interest  is  at  the  basis 

[88] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

of  voluntary  attention,  what  is  at  the  basis 
of  interest?  We  may  state  that  the  expla¬ 
nation  of  what  virtually  interests  us  is  to 
be  found  in  the  last  analysis  in  the  nature 
of  our  personality.  Attention,  the  law  of 
interest,  the  state  of  a  man's  heart — that  is 
the  sequence  of  the  psychic  process.  How 
shall  the  attention  of  the  world  be  turned  to 
higher  things?  This  resolves  itself  into  the 
question,  “How  shall  the  world's  interests  be 
turned  upward?"  Both  of  these  queries 
come  in  the  last  analysis  to  the  basic  prob¬ 
lem,  “How  shall  the  heart  of  the  world  be 
changed  so  that  its  interest  and  its  attention 
shall  be  upon  the  proper  social,  moral,  and 
spiritual  values  ?"  Christianity  answers  this 
challenge  of  psychology  by  the  old,  old  story, 
“Ye  must  be  born  again." 

Let  us  notice  briefly  the  law  of 
ASSOCIATION 

Some  years  ago  psychologists  reduced  all 
of  our  mental  life  to  the  power  of  association. 
The  law  of  association  was  made  a  mighty 
force  that  really  took  the  place  of  the  human 
soul,  and  did  all  of  our  thinking,  feeling, 
and  willing.  But  the  law  can  achieve  no 
such  miracles  as  this.  The  power  of  associ¬ 
ation  presupposes  a  soul  for  its  very  mean¬ 
ing  and  operation ;  and  it  is  vain  to  expect  it 
in  any  merely  mechanical  way  to  generate 
ideas,  emotions,  and  volitions.  We  have  all 
witnessed  in  a  practical  way  the  working  of 
this  law.  When  we  allow  our  attention  to 

[89] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

wander,  why  is  it  that  one  idea  will  suggest 
another ;  and  that  one  conception  will  follow 
another  in  this  way  indefinitely  in  the  field 
of  consciousness?  The  physiological  bases 
of  association  are  the  pathways  cut  in  the 
brain  to  which  I  referred  in  the  study  on 
habit.  Let  us  imagine  a  given  pathway  that 
is  about  to  discharge  into  one  of  two  others. 
Into  which  will  it  go?  That  will  depend  on 
the  number  of  times  that  it  has  discharged 
into  the  given  pathways,  and  to  the  inten¬ 
sity  of  such  discharges.  Or  to  put  the  mat¬ 
ter  in  more  practical  terms,  one  idea  will 
suggest  another,  because  in  the  past  it  has 
been  more  often  connected  with  that  idea 
than  with  others,  or  because  it  has  been 
associated  with  it  in  an  intense  degree.  Such 
is  the  mechanical  or  neural  basis  of  associ¬ 
ation.  The  New  Psychology  makes  the  com¬ 
plex  the  fundamental  element  in  our  psychic 
life.  Now  the  complex  is  nothing  but  a 
network  of  associated  ideas  with  a  common 
emotional  coloring.  These  kindred  com¬ 
plexes  are  said  to  be  organized  into  a  com¬ 
mon  psychic  group  or  system  called  “con¬ 
stellations.1 ”  We  hear  today  of  various  com¬ 
plexes — the  inferiority,  the  sex,  the  religious, 
etc.  Now  any  complex  becomes  dangerous, 
when  it  dominates  the  psychic  life,  and 
usurps  the  autonomy  which  the  central  per¬ 
sonality  ordinarily  exercises.  Now  it  is  un¬ 
doubtedly  true  that  much  of  the  religious 
thinking  of  the  average  man  is  purely  com¬ 
plex  or  associative  in  nature.  The  lines  that 

[90] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

form  these  religious  constellations  come  from 
various  directions ;  from  our  hereditary  re¬ 
ligious  beliefs,  from  the  conventional  dogmas 
that  are  in  the  air  at  the  time  and  to  which 
we  can  easily  subscribe  in  a  second-hand  sort 
of  a  way,  and  to  the  religious  environment  in 
which  we  are  brought  up.  Now  it  must  be 
clear  to  all  that  merely  associative  thinking 
will  never  advance  civilization  or  the  king¬ 
dom  of  God.  We  need  not  associative  think¬ 
ing  but  creative,  directive  grappling  at  first 
hand  with  the  eternal  realities. 

At  this  point  we  would  say  just  a  word 
about  the  operation  of 

MEMORY 

Professor  James  in  his  Psychology  says 
that  the  complete  exercise  of  memory  pre¬ 
supposes  two  things:  the  RETENTION  of 
the  remembered  fact;  and  its  REMINIS¬ 
CENCE,  REPRODUCTION,  OR  RECALL. 
He  says  that  the  cause  both  of  retention  and 
of  recollection  is  the  law  of  habit  in  the 
nervous  system,  working,  as  it  does,  in  the 
association  of  ideas.  Sigmund  Freud  says 
that  the  act  of  forgetting  is  a  protective 
mechanism  of  the  mind.  We  forget  what  we 
do  not  wish  to  remember  or  consider  of  little 
importance.  Memory  is  a  most  important 
element  in  our  intellectual  life.  At  the  basis 
of  that  mysterious  thing  that  we  call  personal 
identity  is  memory.  Dr.  Snowden  calls  it 
“the  spinal  column  of  personality.”  Prof. 
Ladd  has  told  us  that  when  we  revive  an 

[91] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

image  from  the  past,  our  entire  mental  his¬ 
tory  is  involved.  Memory  is  the  storehouse 
of  the  mind;  and  many  thinkers  claim  that 
we  never  lose  the  impress  of  a  single  experi¬ 
ence.  Thus  we  carry  around  with  us  the 
result  of  our  entire  past  history  and  ex¬ 
perience.  Every  impression,  whether  it  be 
high  or  low,  noble  or  degraded,  leaves  its 
mark  on  the  nervous  system  and  is  determi¬ 
native  in  our  future  mental  operations.  This 
is  a  serious  thought  that  we  never  entirely 
forget  anything,  and  that  in  our  nervous 
system  we  carry  around  all  of  the  results  of 
our  past  history.  It  is  the  storehouse  of  our 
past  experience;  and  it  is  for  us  to  deter¬ 
mine,  especially  when  we  are  young,  whether 
it  shall  harbour  vile,  ignoble,  base  thoughts ; 
or  whether  it  shall  be  a  treasure  house  of  all 
that  is  lofty,  and  true,  and  pure.  Memory 
is  the  faculty  of  tradition,  of  “standpatism,” 
of  ultra-conservatism.  It  sees  the  best  day 
in  the  past.  While  it  exercises  a  useful  role 
in  the  midst  of  the  religious  radicalism  and 
modernism  of  the  present,  yet  it  cannot  be 
allowed  to  dominate  all  of  our  thinking,  and 
to  chain  us  to  the  past. 

In  the  last  place,  we  would  discuss 
IMAGINATION 

Dr.  Snowden  calls  it  the  “picture-making 
power  of  the  mind.”  Psychologists  classify 
imagination  under  the  heads  of  productive 
and  reproductive.  The  latter  is  that  power 
of  the  mind  by  virtue  of  which  it  brings  up 

[92] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

copies  of  past  experiences,  even  after  the 
original  outward  stimulus  is  gone.  The  ma¬ 
terial  on  which  it  works  is  that  found  in  the 
storehouse  of  memory.  Productive  imagi¬ 
nation,  while  perforce  it  must  make  use  of 
many  of  the  results  of  our  past  experience, 
yet  either  by  an  original  re-classification  of 
our  past  materials,  or  by  some  stroke  of  cre¬ 
ative  activity,  it  brings  forth  a  new  image. 
Imagination  has  come  unto  her  own  today. 
Emile  Coue  says  that  imagination  rather 
than  the  will  is  the  determining  factor  in 
mental  life,  and  that  in  a  conflict  between 
the  two  the  imagination  is  always  the  victor. 
Many  modern  religious  writers  would  state 
that  religious  values  are  due  to  the  work  of 
the  imagination,  and  are  the  projection  out¬ 
ward  and  upward  of  our  unrealized  desires. 
Undoubtedly  imagination  is  a  vital  faculty 
to  the  student  of  the  psychology  of  religion. 
Many  preachers  and  teachers  fail  because 
they  do  not  pay  a  proper  heed  to  its  use. 

Then,  from  a  theoretical  standpoint,  the 
work  of  this  faculty  is  important.  One  of  the 
greatest  mysteries  of  theology  is  creation  out 
of  nothing  .  It  is  hard  for  the  human  mind  to 
envisage  just  such  a  process.  There  is  no 
analogy  to  absolute  creation  in  nature.  It 
is  purely  a  tenet  of  revelation.  Perhaps  the 
nearest  approach  to  such  creation  is  in  the 
work  of  productive  imagination  that,  in  the 
hands  of  our  poets,  artists,  and  musicians, 
brings  forth  something  new  and  novel.  Such 
is  its  theoretical  significance  to  theology. 

[93] 


Chapter  V. 


The  Feelings  and  the  Will 

IN  this  lesson  we  would  discuss  those  facul¬ 
ties  of  the  mind  that  we  style  the  feelings 
and  the  will.  Let  us  notice,  then, 

THE  FEELINGS 

The  interpretation  of  religion  based  on  the 
use  of  this  faculty  is  MYSTICISM. 

Psychologists  have  long  debated  as  to  what 
is  the  basis  of  the  emotions.  In  general, 
three  different  theories  have  been  advanced. 
The  first  would  give  the  emotions  a  purely 
physical  foundation.  As  Ladd  says  in  his 
Outlines  of  Physiological  Psychology,  “Feel¬ 
ings  are,  essentially  considered,  a  peculiar 
consciousness  of  the  condition  of  the  nervous 
system.”  In  general,  this  theory  holds  that 
experiences  that  enhance  the  general  vitality 
of  the  bodily  organism  give  pleasure,  while 
those  which  impede  its  regular  function, 
cause  pain.  Under  this  head  we  would  in¬ 
clude  the  theory  of  Professor  James,  that  our 
emotions  in  a  given  case  do  not  follow  from 
the  mental  perception  of  a  given  fact,  but 
from  the  bodily  changes  that  immediately 
ensue.  In  other  words,  he  would  claim  that 
we  do  not  cry  because  we  are  sad,  but  that 
we  are  sorrowful  because  we  cry.  The  sec¬ 
ond  theory  holds  that  feelings  are  secondary 

[94] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

conditions  of  the  mind,  dependent  on  the  re¬ 
lation  of  ideas.  If  ideas  inhibit  each  other, 
the  resulting  consciousness  produces  pain ; 
while  if  they  further  each  other  and  readily 
coalesce,  a  feeling  of  pleasure  results.  The 
third,  and  as  we  believe,  the  true  theory  of 
the  feelings  holds,  as  Ladd  expresses  it, 
“Feeling  is  a  primitive  and  underived  mode 
of  operation  of  conscious  mind.”  It  is  un¬ 
derived  from  any  other  psychic  fact;  it  is 
one  of  those  ultimate  facts  of  consciousness 
that,  because,  it  is  ultimate,  cannot  be  well 
defined.  There  is  a  peculiar,  personal,  pri¬ 
vate  element  in  a  feeling  that  is  absolutely 
unique.  When  one  asks  us  to  describe  a  feel¬ 
ing,  the  best  answer  we  can  give  is,  “I  have 
felt.  You  must  have  the  same  experience  to 
understand.”  Any  effort  to  translate  feel¬ 
ings  into  purely  intellectual  terms  is  a  par¬ 
tial  failure.  They  belong  to  different  realms 
of  consciousness  and  have  no  common  de¬ 
nominator. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  use  of  the  feel¬ 
ings  in  general?  Have  they  a  legitimate 
function  in  life,  or  are  they  a  relic,  as  some 
claim,  of  man’s  emergence  from  barbarism, 
that  should  be  allowed  to  dry  up  and  to 
atrophy?  Many  students  who  have  done 
work  in  the  philosophic  departments  of  our 
larger  universities  have  found  that  there  are 
many  professors  who  seemed  to  think  that 
it  was  a  disgrace  to  manifest  their  feelings. 
Since  they  considered  that  any  flow  of  the 
emotions  would  hinder  the  best  scientific  and 

[95] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

logical  work,  they  rather  encouraged  the 
suppression  of  all  the  feelings.  I  believe 
that  it  was  Charles  Darwin  who  confessed  in 
later  years  that  he  had  worked  so  long  at 
cold,  scientific  investigations,  that  some  of 
his  emotions  had  practically  atrophied.  Is 
a  destruction  of  the  emotions  desirable?  Are 
they  a  faculty  once  useful  in  our  early  strug¬ 
gles  with  the  beasts,  as  some  claim,  that  we 
have  today  outgrown ;  and  hence  should  be 
removed,  as  no  longer  necessary,  somewhat 
as  we  get  rid  of  the  vermiform  appendix? 
Because  they  often  arouse  a  personal  bias  in 
any  investigation  and  hence  rather  inhibit 
the  cold,  passionless  activity  of  the  intellect, 
should  they  be  destroyed?  I  hasten  to  an¬ 
swer  most  emphatically,  “No.”  I  believe  that 
the  feelings  constitute  one  of  the  important 
faculties  of  the  human  soul,  along  with  the 
intellect  and  the  will.  God  has  given  us  our 
feelings  with  a  purpose;  and  He  never  in¬ 
tended  that  we  should  destroy  or  abuse  them. 
THERE  CAN  BE  NO  COMPLETE  PER¬ 
SONALITY  WITHOUT  A  DISCIPLINED 
CULTIVATION  OF  THE  FEELINGS.  I 
care  not  how  acutely  logical  the  mind  of  the 
scholar  has  become,  if  he  has  lost  his  power 
of  emotion,  he  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  neural 
abnormality.  I  care  not  how  well  disciplined 
and  how  well  controlled  the  will  of  man  may 
be,  if  his  feelings  have  dried  up,  he  is  not  a 
well-rounded  personality.  The  feelings  have 
been  planted  in  us  by  the  Creator  for  a  pur¬ 
pose;  and  it  is  a  sin  for  us  to  try  to  uproot 

[96] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

them.  As  Dr.  Snowden  says  in  his  Psy¬ 
chology  of  Religion,  “The  interests  of  life 
reside  in  our  feelings.  It  is  not  until  our 
ideas  strike  these  mystic  strings  and  wake 
them  into  music  or  discord  that  they  elicit 
our  interest.  The  feelings  are  also  the  im¬ 
mediate  motives  that  move  the  will.  There 
is  no  tendency  for  the  will  to  act  until  the 
feelings  pour  their  flow  upon  it  as  a  stream 
upon  a  wheel,  or  as  steam  into  the  cylinder 
upon  the  piston  that  drives  the  engine.” 
Most  of  our  sense  of  worths  and  values  in 
life  resides  in  the  feelings.  We  should  some¬ 
times  try  to  see  just  how  many  of  the  real 
values  in  life  can  be  reduced  to  the  form  of 
cold  logic.  We  would  likely  find  that  there 
are  very  few.  Most  of  those  things  that 
make  life  and  intercourse  attractive,  win¬ 
some,  and  charming  have  their  basis  in  a 
well  disciplined  use  of  the  feelings. 

Now  the  feelings  have  always  assumed 
great  prominence  in  the  interpretation  of  re¬ 
ligious  facts.  Many  writers  have  held  that 
religion  made  its  appeal  primarily  to  the 
feelings.  Schliermacher,  the  father  of  mod¬ 
ern  subjectivism,  has  defined  religion  as  “a 
feeling  of  dependence.”  James  and  Pratt 
have  made  the  emotions  the  primary  organ 
for  the  interpretation  of  religious  reality.  It 
is  undoubtedly  a  fact  that  much  of  our  popu¬ 
lar  religious  psychology  and  liberalism  with 
their  teachings  that  we  can  have  an  immedi¬ 
ate  intuitive  sense  of  the  divine  within  us, 
that  we  can  open  the  flood  gates  of  conscious- 

[97] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ness  and  let  the  Over  Soul  pour  within  us, 
that  salvation  consists  in  a  realization  of  the 
Christ  that  is  within,  that  they  are  based  on 
pure  mysticism.  There  is  a  certain  charm 
about  mysticism.  To  neglect  all  objective 
standards  of  truth,  all  of  the  demands  of  the 
intellect,  and  to  indulge  in  a  purely  private, 
subjective,  immediate  intuition  of  truth,  to 
hear  the  still  small  voice  within,  to  heed  the 
inner  light  alone — such  an  experience  pos¬ 
sesses  undoubted  exhiliration.  The  subject 
by  neglecting  all  objective  standards  of  truth 
is  free  from  the  worries  incident  to  theologi¬ 
cal,  historical  and  critical  problems,  and  can 
have  the  absolute  certitude  of  a  personal  con¬ 
tact  with  reality,  and  can  feel  the  warmth 
and  glow  of  the  touch  of  religious  verities. 
While  his  experience  of  truth  is  entirely  sub¬ 
jective,  yet  he  is  satisfied.  Is  that  not  enough 
in  religion?  He  can  answer  his  critics  in  the 
words  of  the  poet  Tennyson  as  he  wrote  in 
the  midst  of  the  skepticism  of  the  19th  cen¬ 
tury : 

I  found  Him  not  in  world  or  sun, 

Or  eagle’s  wing,  or  insect’s  eye: 

Nor  through  the  questions  men  may  try, 
The  petty  cobwebs  we  have  spun; 

If  e’er,  when  faith  had  fallen  asleep, 

I  heard  a  voice,  “Believe  no  more,” 

And  heard  an  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep ; 


[981 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 

The  freezing  reason’s  colder  part, 

And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answered,  “I  have  felt.” 

What  shall  we  say  as  to  mysticism?  Now 
the  very  fact  that  this  philosophy  has  led  its 
devotees  into  the  affirmation  of  directly  con¬ 
tradictory  positions,  and  also  into  great  ex¬ 
travagances,  neurotic  and  even  immoral, 
should  convince  us  all  that  there  should  be 
some  limitations  to  the  use  of  the  feelings 
in  religion.  That  there  is  an  element  of  truth 
in  mysticism,  and  that  in  religious  experi¬ 
ence  there  is  a  personal,  private  apprehen¬ 
sion  of  the  truth  that  each  must  have  for 
himself  in  order  to  be  a  Christian,  no  one 
will  deny.  But  this  is  different  from  affirm¬ 
ing  that  mysticism  is  the  correct  mode  of 
interpretation  of  Christianity,  and  that 
Christian  experience  alone  is  the  final  form 
for  the  formation  of  Christian  truth.  What 
are  the  correctives  that  we  should  apply  to 
mysticism,  or  to  the  use  of  the  feelings  in 
religion? 

In  the  first  place,  the  true  psychic  order 
is  for  the  intellect  to  guide  in  the  apprehen¬ 
sion  of  the  truth.  Of  course,  this  position  is 
repellent  to  the  mystic,  for  he  wishes  to  be 
turned  adrift  without  a  pilot  upon  the  wild 
seas  of  subjective  experience.  He  replies 
that  we  are  bringing  in  doctrine,  and  that 
religion  is  not  doctrine  but  life.  That  brings 
us  to  the  important  question  as  to  the  proper 

[99] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

relation  between  doctrine  and  life.  I  would 
state  that  doctrine  is  related  to  life  both  in 
its  GENESIS  and  in  its  GUIDANCE.  Now 
all  life  must  have  some  source;  it  must  flow 
from  some  spring  of  truth.  The  very  quality 
of  the  stream  of  life  will  be  largely  deter¬ 
mined  by  whether  it  flows  from  a  pure  or  a 
foul  spring.  Now  the  source  of  Christian 
life  is  certain  great  historic  facts  connected 
with  the  life,  death,  and  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  and  a  certain  interpretation  of  said 
facts.  Now  the  facts  themselves  constitute 
history;  the  interpretation  is  doctrine;  and 
the  result  is  life.  This  then  is  the  three-fold 
process  involved  in  the  creation  of  any  kind 
of  life :  fact  or  history,  interpretation  of  this 
fact  or  doctrine,  and  the  entering  in  of  this 
fact  so  interpreted  into  my  experience  in  the 
form  of  life.  All  life — secular,  scientific,  re¬ 
ligious — originates  in  this  way.  We  go 
through  exactly  the  same  process  in  regard 
to  every  experience  in  the  every-day  world. 
I  read  of  some  great  national  or  international 
event  in  the  newspaper.  What  is  the  first 
question  that  arises  in  my  mind?  It  is  this: 
is  that  true  or  not-  Is  that  real  history? 
Then,  when  I  have  decided  that  it  is  accu¬ 
rate  history,  what  is  the  next  step?  It  is 
this :  what  is  the  significance  of  that  event 
in  world  history?  It  is  always  a  process 
of  interpretation.  In  other  words,  we  are 
only  constructing  a  doctrine  of  that  given 
event.  We  are  building  up  systems  of  doc¬ 
trine  every  day.  But  there  is  one  more  as- 

[100] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


pect  of  the  event  to  be  considered.  What  ef¬ 
fect  will  it  have  on  my  life?  Will  it  change 
my  life  for  better  or  for  worse?  This  is 
what  I  call  the  experimental  side  of  the  issue. 
It  is  where  life  growing  out  of  the  interpre¬ 
tation  or  doctrine  of  this  given  fact  origi¬ 
nates. 

Then  this  life  after  it  has  started  flowing 
must  be  properly  guided.  This  act  of  guid¬ 
ance  is  the  function  of  the  intellect.  In  the 
Delta  of  the  Mississippi  years  ago  when  there 
were  no  levees,  the  Father  of  Waters  spread 
out  at  times  for  forty  miles  in  width.  There 
were  no  banks  to  guide  the  stream.  Now,  by 
a  magnificent  set  of  levees  it  is  kept  within 
a  certain  channel.  The  stream  of  religious 
life  of  many  people  today  is  like  the  Missis¬ 
sippi  in  the  olden  times.  It  just  flows  pro¬ 
miscuously  and  widely  over  all  the  swamps 
and  bogs  of  error,  heresy,  and  extravagance. 
Its  stream  of  life  needs  some  levees  of  doc¬ 
trine  to  confine  it  within  sane  channels. 

In  the  second  place,  mysticism  needs  to 
conform  to  the  great  objective  standard,  the 
word  of  God.  The  Bible  through  the  work 
of  the  Spirit  is  the  source  of  all  religious  life ; 
and  all  Christian  life  and  experience  should 
be  tested  by  it.  Of  course,  the  mystic  objects 
to  all  external  or  objective  standards  of  con¬ 
duct  or  truth.  Does  he  not  have  the  inner 
light,  the  Christ  within  to  guide?  Pitzer  in 
a  recent  number  of  the  Princeton  Review 
argues  that  Mysticism  is  nothing  but  the 
[101] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

blind  instinct  for  God  of  natural  religion.  I 
was  once  talking  to  a  friend,  a  minister,  who 
claimed  that  he  did  not  need  the  law  of  God 
as  revealed  in  the  Bible  to  guide  his  foot¬ 
steps,  because  he  had  the  Christ  within  to 
guide  him.  We  had  been  talking  about  one 
method  for  securing  international  peace,  and 
he  had  disdainfully  replied  that  he  had  no 
interest  in  all  such  projects.  He  further  said 
that  we  ought  to  be  building  battleships  to 
destroy  the  Japanese.  I  thought  in  horror, 
“What  sort  of  a  Christian  are  you?  Surely 
in  addition  to  the  Christ  within,  you  need 
some  acquaintance  with  the  Christ  of  objec¬ 
tive  Revelation  who  has  told  us  to  love  our 
enemies  and  to  do  good  to  those  who  despite- 
fully  use  us.”  This  only  goes  to  show  that 
the  great  danger  of  mysticism  is  anti-nomi- 
anism,  or  a  disregard  of  the  law  of  God  as 
a  rule  of  faith  and  practice  for  the  Christian. 

In  the  third  place,  the  mystic  needs  to 
remember  that  the  end  of  every  normal 
psychic  state  should  be  some  kind  of  an 
action.  An  intellectual  apprehension  of  the 
truth  should  lead  to  an  emotional  attitude, 
and  this  should  lead  to  some  kind  of  an  act 
of  will.  Modern  psychology  with  its  reduc¬ 
tion  of  all  psychic  life  to  the  three-fold  pro¬ 
cess  of  stimulation,  central  adjustment,  and 
motor  response,  makes  it  clear  that  every 
act  of  emotion  should  lead  to  an  adjustment 
of  some  kind  to  reality.  Whenever  the  pro¬ 
cess  of  intellection,  emotion,  and  will  is  cut 
off  at  any  stage,  we  have  a  truncated  process 

[102] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

that  is  abnormal.  We  should  not  engage  in 
any  emotion  as  a  nervous  luxury,  but  should 
allow  it  to  pass  into  some  decision,  or  change 
of  will.  Every  time  that  we  have  a  good 
impulse  and  allow  it  to  evaporate  into  maud¬ 
lin  sentimentality,  we  are  left  all  the  weaker, 
and  are  liable  to  degenerate  into  a  flabby, 
moral  character. 

In  the  next  place  we  would  discuss  that 
faculty  of  the  soul  that  we  call 

THE  WILL 

The  philosophy  of  religion  based  on  the 
will  as  the  interpreter  of  religious  data  is 
VOLUNTARISM.  Mr.  Angell  says  that  the 
will  is  the  “Whole  mind  active.”  Professor 
Warren  denies  that  the  will  is  an  original 
faculty  of  the  soul,  but  holds  that  it  is  a 
secondary  state  arising  through  the  chance 
nervous  connections,  and  that  its  appropri¬ 
ateness  is  due  to  natural  selection. 

The  function  of  the  will  in  religion  is  much 
emphasized  today.  The  doctrine  of  evolu¬ 
tion  with  its  insistence  on  the  fact  that  the 
end  of  every  psychic  process  should  be  a 
motor  adjustment  to  environment  is  largely 
responsible  for  the  prominence  given  to  this 
faculty.  Life,  holds  Tridon  in  his  Psycho 
Analysis,  is  largely  the  result  of  the  three 
great  urges — the  nutrition,  the  sex,  and  the 
safety  urges.  The  stress  placed  on  the  will 
in  the  philosophy  of  religion  goes  back  to 
Kant,  who  held  that  God,  freedom,  and  im- 

[103] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

mortality  could  not  be  proved  by  the  pure 
reason,  but  were  postulates  of  the  practical 
reason.  Schopenhauer,  the  great  German 
philosopher,  has  interpreted  the  universe  as 
the  product  of  unconscious  will.  This  ac¬ 
centuating  of  the  will  has  led  to  Pragmatism 
in  philosophy  with  its  tenet  that  the  true  in 
doctrine  and  in  life  is  that  which  works. 
In  Theology  the  same  tendency  is  seen  in 
the  insistence  that  it  is  not  doctrine,  but  the 
social  side  of  the  Gospel  that  counts.  Now  it 
is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  will  is  a  most 
vital  faculty  in  the  Psychology  of  Religion. 
It  is  enslaved  in  sin;  and  until  it  is  reached 
by  the  power  of  the  Spirit,  it  makes  no  dif¬ 
ference  how  intellectually  Orthodox  a  man 
may  be,  or  how  many  tears  he  may  shed,  he 
is  not  a  saved  man.  The  end  of  all  preaching 
should  be  to  reach  the  will,  and  to  lead  to  a 
religious  reaction  of  some  kind.  When  Jesus 
found  the  impotent  man  at  the  pool  of 
Bethesda,  He  did  not  say,  “Does  your  intel¬ 
lect  make  it  plain  that  you  should  be  made 
whole?”  He  did  not  say,  “Do  you  feel  like 
being  saved?”  No,  this  Master  student  of 
the  human  soul  went  right  to  the  crucial  spot, 
and  said,  “Wilt  thou  be  made  whole?” 

Now  important  as  is  the  will,  it  cannot  be 
left  as  the  sole  interpreter  of  Christianity. 
We  cannot  trust  the  pure  will  any  more  than 
we  can  trust  the  pure  feelings  in  the  appre¬ 
hension  of  religious  truth.  The  great  urges 
are  blind  and  will  lead  to  destruction  just  as 
readily  as  to  salvation.  Germany  for  a  cen- 

[104] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

tury  followed  the  blind  urges,  and  we  see 
where  they  have  led  her.  The  truth  is  that 
the  world  has  followed  the  blind  leadings 
of  the  animal  urges  long  enough.  This  is  our 
great  trouble  today.  The  will  needs  guidance 
from  the  intellect  and  from  the  word  of  God 
just  as  truly  as  do  the  emotions. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  relation  of  intel¬ 
lection  to  volition :  of  how  the  reason  should 
be  the  guide  for  both  the  feelings  and  the 
will.  Now  I  would  discuss  briefly  the  effect 
of  willing  on  our  thinking.  It  was  Professor 
James  who  coined  the  celebrated  phrase, 
“The  will  to  believe.”  Men  had  long  known 
that  in  the  choice  of  their  beliefs  the  pure 
intellect  alone  could  not  determine  which 
they  would  accept.  They  would  never  make 
any  decisions  if  they  waited  until  the  intel¬ 
lect  made  the  results  of  a  given  course  logi¬ 
cally  and  mathematically  clear.  Thus  there 
is  the  man  who  is  waiting  to  decide  in  his 
beliefs  between  atheism  and  theism.  Now 
if  he  expects  the  issue  to  be  made  indis¬ 
putably  clear  by  rigorous  logic,  he  will  have 
to  wait  until  Doomsday,  until  he  makes  his 
decision.  So  it  is  evident  that  if  he  is  ever 
to  take  his  stand  upon  any  belief  at  all,  the 
case  must  be  appealed  to  some  other  faculty 
besides  the  pure  intellect.  His  active  in¬ 
terests  in  life  must  decide  for  him  which 
theory  (Theism  or  Atheism)  he  wills  to  be 
true;  he  must  accept  his  belief  even  on  in¬ 
complete  evidence ;  and  set  forth  to  make  his 
platform  true.  This  is  only  another  way  of 

[105] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

saying  that  he  must  accept  certain  great 
facts  on  faith,  and  labour  that  gradually  his 
faith  may  be  transformed  into  knowledge. 
This  attitude  of  mind  Professor  James  calls 
the  “Will  to  believe.”  Says  he,  “When  I  look 
at  the  religious  question  as  it  really  puts 
itself  to  concrete  men,  and  when  I  think  of  all 
the  possibilities  which  both  practically  and 
theoretically  it  involves,  then  this  command 
that  we  shall  put  a  stopper  on  our  heart,  in¬ 
stincts  and  courage  and  wait — acting,  of 
course,  meanwhile  more  or  less  as  if  religion 
were  not  true — till  such  a  time  as  our  intel¬ 
lect  and  senses  working  together  may  have 
raked  in  evidence  enough — this  command,  I 
say,  seems  to  me  the  queerest  idol  ever  manu¬ 
factured  in  the  philosophic  cave.”  Christ 
Himself  realized  the  effect  of  our  willing  on 
our  believing.  He  did  not  claim  in  any  place 
to  make  Christian  truths  logically  and  math¬ 
ematically  clear  to  the  believer  right  at  the 
beginning.  He  says  in  John  7:17,  If  any 
man  will  do  His  will,  he  shall  know  of  the 
doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God  or  whether  I 
speak  of  myself.  The  will  to  believe  is  at  the 
basis  of  the  psychology  of  conviction,  as  Jas- 
trow  has  shown.  It  is  at  the  basis  of  much 
fundamental  discussion  of  Liberalism,  Mod¬ 
ernism,  and  Higher  Criticism.  It  is  un¬ 
doubtedly  true  that  many  an  ultra-modernist 
has  a  will  “not  to  believe  in  the  super-nat¬ 
ural,”  has  developed  a  sort  of  “naturalistic” 
complex  that  colours  all  his  thinking  and  is 
in  danger  of  taking  the  reigns  of  control 

[106] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

from  his  personality.  Hence  when  he  finds 
a  fact  in  the  documents  that  seems  to  support 
Super-naturalism,  he  is  sure  that  the  given 
datum  must  be  wrong  or  must  belong  to  a 
later  document. 

With  this  I  bring  to  a  conclusion  that  part 
of  the  discussion  which  deals  with  the  chal¬ 
lenge  which  the  tried  principles  of  psychol¬ 
ogy  make  to  Christianity.  The  central  fact 
that  I  would  leave  before  the  mind  of  the 
reader  is  that  Christianity  makes  its  appeal 
to  the  whole  personality  of  man,  and  that  it 
takes  the  whole  personality,  and  not  any  one 
exclusive  faculty  to  interpret  it.  Let  us  com¬ 
pare  the  soul  of  man  to  a  great  steam  engine. 
Now,  in  order  that  the  engine  may  properly 
function  three  things  are  necessary:  there 
must  be  fire  in  the  box  to  give  heat  to  the 
boiler ;  there  must  be  steam  to  give  power  to 
the  pistons ;  there  must  be  an  engineer  in  the 
cab  to  manipulate  the  throttle,  and  to  guide 
the  working  of  the  engine  in  general.  Now 
the  steam  in  the  boiler  is  the  will  or  motive 
power  in  man ;  and  the  fire  in  the  box  is 
comparable  to  the  feelings,  that  by  their  ar¬ 
dent,  kindling  rays  are  intended  to  arouse 
the  will  into  action ;  while  the  engineer  in 
the  cab  is  the  reason.  Would  we  dare  to  heat 
that  engine  red  hot,  with  the  steam  escaping 
from  the  valves,  and  start  it  down  the  track 
with  no  engineer  at  the  throttle?  We  would 
say  that  such  a  wild  engine  would  be  a  men¬ 
ace  to  everything  else  on  the  line  of  railroad. 
But  if  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  world  we 
arouse  the  feelings  of  man  to  fever  heat  and 

[107] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

energize  his  will,  and  yet  do  not  allow  the 
reason  to  act  as  the  guide  to  his  soul,  we  are 
turning  loose  upon  society  a  mighty,  uncon¬ 
trollable  power  that  will  be  a  menace  to  all 
that  come  its  way.  No — it  is  never  safe  to 
arouse  the  religious  emotions  and  will  of 
man,  unless  the  intellect  is  put  in  charge  to 
direct  their  religious  functioning.  Christi¬ 
anity  then  makes  its  appeal  to  the  whole  per¬ 
sonality  of  man ;  and  is  properly  interpret¬ 
able  only  by  the  whole  soul.  There  have 
arisen  great  systems  of  thought  which  have 
claimed  that  religion  makes  its  appeal  ex¬ 
clusively  and  primarily  to  one  isolated  fac¬ 
ulty.  One  party  claims  that  religion  is  in¬ 
tended  exclusively  for  the  intellect.  We  call 
them  Intellectualists.  Another  school  of 
thinkers  state  that  Christianity  makes  its 
primary  appeal  to  the  feelings ;  and  we  have 
mysticism.  Then  there  are  others  who  make 
it  the  keystone  of  their  system  that  the  will 
is  the  primary  organ  for  the  apprehension 
and  the  interpretation  of  the  truth.  These 
we  call  Voluntarists.  Now  all  of  these  sys¬ 
tems  are  partly  wrong  and  partly  right. 
They  are  right  in  claiming  that  religion  does 
make  an  appeal  to  these  respective  faculties ; 
and  they  are  wrong  in  holding  that  it  appeals 
exclusively  to  them  and  in  denying  the  testi¬ 
mony  of  the  other  faculties  to  the  truth.  I 
believe  that  the  true  position  is  that  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  intended  for  the  whole  personality 
of  man  (intellect,  feelings,  and  will),  and 
that  it  takes  all  three  to  interpret  it  cor¬ 
rectly. 


[108] 


Chapter  VI. 


The  New  Psychology 

IN  this  study  we  wish  to  consider  some 
aspects  of  the  New  Psychology  as  it  Chal¬ 
lenges  Christianity.  We  may  differentiate 
the  subject  matter  of  this  science  from  the 
old  psychology  by  saying  that  it  deals  more 
particularly  with  the  non-rational,  hidden, 
subconscious  elements  of  our  psychic  experi¬ 
ence  rather  than  with  the  conscious  side  of 
it.  We  will  understand  more  fully  the  nature 
of  the  New  Psychology,  as  we  consider  its 
bearing  on  the  general  subject  of  religious 
work.  Let  us  note  under  the  following  heads 
its  importance  to  the  Christian : 

(U 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  DOCTRINE 
OF  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS  MIND 

With  a  little  study  and  reflection  each  one 
of  us  can  realize  the  important  part  that  the 
subsconscious  mind  plays  in  our  every-day 
life.  There  are  many  mental  operations  that 
cannot  be  performed  at  all  by  the  conscious 
self,  but  which  must  be  entrusted  for  their 
successful  performance  to  the  subconscious 
soul.  For  example,  in  times  of  insomnia,  we 
have  found  that  the  more  our  conscious 
minds  laboured  to  bring  on  sleep,  the  greater 

[109] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

was  the  failure,  and  that  we  found  rest  only 
by  dispersing  conscious  attention  and  en¬ 
trusting  the  whole  operation  to  the  subcon¬ 
scious  soul.  To  illustrate  further,  as  we  have 
tried  to  remember  a  name  that  has  just 
barely  slipped  from  our  memory,  we  have 
discovered  that  by  conscious  attention  we 
never  could  find  it,  but  that  when  we  ceased 
trying  to  recollect  it,  sooner  or  later  it  welled 
forth  from  the  depths  of  our  subliminal  be¬ 
ing.  Again,  in  those  days  of  the  long  ago, 
when  we  were  endeavouring  to  learn  to  ride 
a  bicycle,  we  found  that  if  we  saw  an  obstacle 
in  the  road  that  we  wished  to  avoid,  the  more 
our  conscious  minds  thought  about  that  dan¬ 
ger  and  the  necessity  of  avoiding  it,  that  the 
greater  was  our  likelihood  of  hitting  it. 
Thus  there  are  many  operations  in  our  lives 
that  the  working  of  the  conscious  part  of  our 
being  hinders,  and  that  should  be  turned  over 
completely  to  the  function  of  the  subcon¬ 
scious  self.  Now,  a  recognition  of  the  prac¬ 
tical  working  of  the  subliminal  in  practical 
experience  has  led  to  a  scientific  study  of  the 
nature  and  function  of  the  subconscious. 
Volumes  have  been  written  on  the  subject. 
Mr.  Galton  as  quoted  by  Jastrow  in  The  Sub¬ 
conscious  has  this  to  say,  “There  seems  to  be 
a  presence  chamber  in  my  mind  where  full 
consciousness  holds  court,  and  where  two  or 
three  ideas  are  at  the  same  time  in  audience, 
and  an  antechamber  full  of  more  or  less  allied 
ideas,  which  is  situated  just  beyond  the  full 
ken  of  consciousness.,,  This  antechamber  is 

[110] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  subconscious  mind.  It  plays  a  very  im¬ 
portant  part  in  our  mental  life.  Brill  in  Fun¬ 
damental  Conceptions  of  Psycho-Analysis 
says  that  eight-ninths  of  our  actions  are 
guided  by  the  operation  of  the  unconscious. 
Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall  claims  that,  just  as  in 
the  case  of  an  iceberg,  one-eighth  of  its  body 
is  above  the  water  and  seven-eighths  is  be¬ 
low,  so  the  same  ratio  holds  with  the  soul  of 
man,  and  that  seven-eighths  of  his  psychic 
life  belongs  to  the  field  of  the  subconscious. 
The  operation  of  the  subliminal  self  is  es¬ 
pecially  noticeable  in  cases  of  genius  and  in 
the  acquisition  of  proficiency  of  any  kind. 
Those  who  have  played  tennis  very  much 
know  that  when  they  are  trying  to  serve  the 
ball  successfully,  that  it  is  not  wise  to  give 
conscious  attention  to  every  movement,  but 
that  real  proficiency  comes  when  the  whole 
matter  is  taken  under  the  control  of  the  sub¬ 
conscious.  So  it  is  in  learning  to  play  the 
piano.  It  is  the  beginner  that  uses  the  con¬ 
scious  mind  to  attend  to  every  act  of  finger¬ 
ing.  The  genius  has  entrusted  the  whole  op¬ 
eration  to  the  subliminal  self.  It  has  been 
found  that  in  the  case  of  mental  prodigies 
like  skilled  mental  calculators,  the  subcon¬ 
scious  mind  is  the  source  of  their  success. 
Such  is  the  import  of  the  subconscious  in  our 
psychic  life. 

What  is  the  significance  of  the  subliminal 
to  the  religious  worker?  I  believe  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  subconscious  mind  brings 
into  prominence  the  fact  of  the  wide  extent 

[ill] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

and  profound  depths  of  our  personality.  The 
Christian  Psychologist  had  said  long  ago  that 
man  should  not  be  judged  merely  from  his 
external  acts,  but  by  the  nature  back  of  them. 
The  new  teaching  of  the  importance  of  the 
subconscious  only  accentuates  this  truth. 
This  doctrine  is  the  enemy  of  that  super¬ 
ficial  view  of  the  modern  Behaviourists  that 
it  is  action  alone  that  counts  in  psychology, 
and  that  the  psychic  life  of  man  may  be  con¬ 
strued  entirely  in  terms  of  the  purely  neural 
process  of  outward  stimulus,  central  adjust¬ 
ment  and  motor  response.  This  new  tenet 
proclaims  in  no  uncertain  terms  that  it  is 
not  external  actions  that  are  important  in 
psychology  and  in  life,  but  the  nature  of  man 
with  all  of  its  hidden  depths.  It  would  refer 
the  real  sources  of  action  to  the  secret 
springs  hidden  in  the  subconscious  mind 
rather  than  to  the  purely  surface  waters  of 
external  behaviour.  The  New  Psychology 
agrees  with  scripture  that  the  external  ac¬ 
tions  of  man  spring  from  his  inner  nature. 
This  new  science  only  extends  to  marvelous 
and  unthought-of  depths  the  hidden  re¬ 
sources  of  that  nature.  This  is  in  line  with 
the  teachings  of  Christ  in  Matt  12:33  and 
7:17.  He  says,  “Even  so  every  good  tree 
bringeth  forth  good  fruit ;  but  a  corrupt  tree 
bringeth  forth  evil  fruit.  A  good  tree  can¬ 
not  bring  forth  evil  fruit,  neither  can  a  cor¬ 
rupt  tree  bring  forth  good  fruit.”  The  New 
Psychology  in  its  doctrine  of  the  importance 
of  the  subconscious  in  a  man’s  life  only  makes 

[112] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

it  all  the  more  evident  that  a  man  cannot  be 
changed  by  reforming  his  external  actions, 
but  that  the  inner  depths  of  his  nature  must 
be  regenerated.  Except  a  man  be  born  again, 
he  cannot  see  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

The  Bible  everywhere  teaches  that  our  in¬ 
voluntary,  unconscious  acts  are  better  revela¬ 
tions  of  character  than  our  studied  and  vol¬ 
untary  ones.  In  the  great  Judgment  scene  in 
Matthew  25,  it  is  made  clear  that  the  basis 
of  rewards  and  punishment  are  not  the  pre¬ 
meditated,  deliberate,  studied  acts  of  man, 
but  those  little  unconscious,  natural,  involun¬ 
tary  deeds  of  kindness  and  service  like  feed¬ 
ing  the  hungry,  giving  a  cup  of  cold  water 
to  the  thirsty,  clothing  the  naked,  visiting 
those  in  prison.  These  little  acts  are  vital, 
because  they  are  a  more  genuine  manifesta¬ 
tion  of  our  real  characters  and  of  our  atti¬ 
tude  to  Jesus  than  are  our  studied  prayers  in 
public,  our  premeditated  professions,  and  our 
Pharisaic  postures.  It  would  seem  that  our 
subconscious  minds  and  their  operation,  play 
a  most  important  part  in  our  religious  lives. 
In  Matt  12:36  Jesus  teaches  that  for  every 
idle  word,  men  are  to  give  an  account  in  the 
day  of  judgment.  It  would  appear  then  that 
the  manifestations  and  functions  of  the  sub¬ 
liminal  self  are  very  important  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Lord.  We  all  instinctively  realize  that 
the  little,  unpremeditated,  involuntary  ac¬ 
tions  of  men  and  women  are  the  real  mani¬ 
festations  of  their  characters.  As  Words¬ 
worth  has  said  in  Tintern  Abbey,  in  speak- 

[113] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ing  of  the  sensations  that  the  beautiful  banks 
of  the  Wye  have  aroused  in  him : 

.  .  .  feelings  too 

Of  unremembered  pleasure :  such  perhaps, 

As  have  no  slight  or  trivial  influence 
On  that  best  portion  of  a  good  man’s  life, 

His  little,  nameless,  unremembered  acts 
Of  kindness  and  of  love. 

Having  considered  the  import  of  the  sub¬ 
liminal  self,  we  would  now  pass  on  to  an¬ 
other  aspect  of  the  New  Psychology,  viz: 

(ID 

THE  DANGERS  OF  THE  DIVIDED  LIFE 

The  New  Psychology  teaches  that  there  are 
three  stages  in  the  mental  life:  the  conscious 
realm  where  our  ordinary  thinking,  feeling, 
and  willing  take  place ;  the  foreconscious 
where  reside  the  experiences  that  have 
dropped  out  of  memory,  and  other  mental 
elements  that  may  easily  well  forth  into  con¬ 
sciousness  ;  and  thirdly  the  unconscious, 
where  have  been  repressed  painful  experi¬ 
ences  of  the  past,  which  are  held  back  by  a 
barrier  from  crossing  the  threshhold  of  con¬ 
sciousness.  Between  the  conscious  and  fore 
conscious  spheres  there  stands  guard  to  at¬ 
tend  to  the  passage  of  experiences  from  one 
to  the  other  what  has  been  called  the  second¬ 
ary  censor;  while  between  the  unconscious 
and  the  foreconscious  there  is  a  mental  sen¬ 
tinel  called  the  primary  censor.  Now,  at  this 

[114] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

point,  we  wish  to  study  the  relationships 
between  these  three  spheres  and  how  they 
affect  the  internal  harmony  and  well-being 
of  the  mind.  This  is  a  rather  complicated 
matter,  and  one  that  has  occasioned  much 
speculation,  investigation,  and  many  theories 
on  the  part  of  psychologists. 

In  the  New  Psychology  the  fundamental 
factor  is  the  complex.  This  is  an  association 
of  mental  elements  with  a  common  emotional 
colouring,  any  one  of  which  may  arouse  the 
others.  Now  suppose  there  comes  up  a  com¬ 
plex  that  is  out  of  harmony  with  the  rest  of 
the  mental  life.  The  mind  always  tries  to 
maintain  a  state  of  harmony  or  mental 
equilibrium,  and  self-preservation  is  its  first 
law.  What  is  to  be  done  with  the  painful 
complex?  The  mind,  to  preserve  its  inner 
harmony,  performs  what  is  called  an  act  of 
repression  and  throws  the  incompatible 
member  from  the  foreconscious  into  the  un¬ 
conscious,  where  it  is  held  back  by  a  barrier 
from  interfering  with  our  normal  operations. 
Jastrow  in  The  Subconscious  shows  how 
these  dissociated  states  that  have  been 
thrown  out  of  consciousness  in  the  interests 
of  inner  harmony  may  become  so  powerful 
that  they  rebel  against  the  dominant  self, 
set  up  an  autonomy  of  their  own,  and 
threaten  the  unity  of  the  psychic  life.  In 
this  way  we  have  cases  of  dissociated  per¬ 
sonality.  There  is  the  celebrated  case  of 
Miss  Beauchamp,  who  in  addition  to  her  real 
self  could  be  any  one  of  three  different  per- 

[115] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

sons.  She  could  change  her  personality  from 
time  to  time,  often  from  hour  to  hour.  To 
the  demonic  personality  the  name  “Sally” 
was  attached.  She  would  torment  the  other 
self,  even  going  so  far  as  to  make  expeditions 
into  the  country  to  get  spiders,  snakes,  and 
toads  with  which  to  afflict  the  normal  Miss 
Beauchamp.  There  have  been  other  cele¬ 
brated  cases  of  multiple  personalities  like 
Mary  Reynolds,  Rev.  Hanna  and  others. 

Now,  it  must  be  evident  to  all  of  us  that 
the  existence  of  these  repressed  conflicts  in 
the  unconscious  realm  of  our  minds  is  bound 
to  exercise  a  profound  influence  on  the  unity 
of  our  soul  life.  Rebellion  cannot  exist  in 
any  state  without  imperiling  the  very  au¬ 
tonomy  of  that  body.  So  it  is  with  the  mind. 
What  makes  these  repressions  interesting 
and  dangerous  is  that  they  cannot  be  discov¬ 
ered  easily,  but,  as  I  have  said,  are  held  back 
from  consciousness  by  a  barrier  of  some 
kind.  Now  the  work  of  undertaking  to  dis¬ 
cover  the  nature  of  these  conflicts  and  of 
finding  out  how  to  release  them  has  been  done 
by  some  noted  psychologists.  Foremost 
among  these  are  the  Psychologists  Sigmund 
Freud  and  Carl  Jung.  Freud  had  read 
how  Professor  Charcot  had  discovered  the 
symptoms  of  these  repressions  through  the 
use  of  hypnotism.  Freud  was  working  at 
this  time  with  a  Dr.  Breur.  From  the  lat¬ 
ter  he  learned  that  these  barriers  might  be 
discovered  by  letting  the  patient  talk  on  in¬ 
definitely.  In  this  way  sooner  or  later  the 

[116] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

nature  of  the  repression  would  be  disclosed. 
He  discovered  the  “talking  cure.”  In  con¬ 
nection  with  this  he  instituted  the  “Cathartic 
method”  of  purging  or  unburdening  the  mind 
of  past  conflicts.  In  cases  of  hysteria  he 
found  that  these  were  caused  by  the  fact  that 
painful  experiences  at  some  past  time  had 
been  repressed  into  the  unconscious  and  kept 
locked  there.  As  soon  as  the  patient,  through 
constant  talking  disclosed  the  nature  of  this 
past  experience  and  had  an  opportunity  to 
unburden  herself  and  release  the  painful 
complex  from  the  unconscious  mind,  then  the 
hysteria  or  other  disease  ceased.  What  is 
needed  is  an  emotional  outlet ;  and  the  patient 
was  found  to  be  loathe  to  let  go  of  the  painful 
experience.  In  discovering  the  nature  of 
these  repressions  it  was  found  that  there  are 
many  of  our  mannerisms  that  are  symbolic 
actions.  They  are  expressive  of  hidden  con¬ 
flicts  or  concealed  wishes.  Thus,  if  we  study 
many  of  our  mannerisms  we  find  that  they 
may  be  expressive  of  concealed  desires.  The 
rattling  of  coins  may  reveal  a  materialistic 
tendency;  rubbing  the  hands  shows  an  incli¬ 
nation  to  worry;  playing  with  the  mustache 
manifests  a  strain  of  vanity.  Carl  Jung,  of 
Zurich,  a  pupil  of  Freud,  carried  on  the  work 
of  the  master.  He  held  that  the  myths,  phan¬ 
tasies,  and  mythologies  of  the  past  are  but 
the  symbols  of  the  unrealized  wishes  and  in¬ 
complete  strivings  of  mankind.  He  held  that 
we  should  study  these  historic  problems  for 
the  light  they  shed  on  our  own.  These  heroes 

[117] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

of  the  past  are  but  the  personifications  of 
our  human  wishes  and  aspirations,  the 
imagery  of  our  secret  thoughts.  Here  we 
can  see  the  secret  springs  of  impulse  beneath 
the  psychologic  development  of  races.  Jung, 
in  a  most  monumental,  scholarly  work  en¬ 
titled  the  Psychology  of  The  Unconscious, 
has  gathered  together  illustrations  from  the 
past  to  develop  the  above  thesis. 

In  this  connection  there  has  arisen  that 
word  of  which  we  hear  so  much  in  popular 
thought,  “Psycho-analysis.”  This  has  been 
called  “The  surgery  of  the  mind” — for  it 
stands  in  the  same  relation  to  personality  as 
surgery  does  to  the  body.  It  is  a  method  by 
which  through  analysis  of  the  mind  the  na¬ 
ture  of  these  concealed  conflicts  is  found  out, 
in  order  that  they  may  be  released  and  inner 
harmony  restored.  In  the  hands  of  experts 
it  may  be  very  useful;  but  in  the  hands  of 
dilettante  psychologists  it  may  lead  to  morbid 
introspection  and  may  do  us  much  harm  in 
our  mental  life.  Such  is  the  danger  of  the 
divided  life  in  the  sphere  of  psychology. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  divided  life  in 
the  psychology  of  religion?  Tansley  in  The 
New  Psychology  has  shown  that  man  has  a 
definite  amount  of  psychic  energy,  and  that 
its  action  is  very  similar  to  that  of  physical 
energy.  Like  physical  energy  it  tends  to 
escape  by  all  sorts  of  side  channels  or 
through  weak  points  in  the  barriers  to  action, 
and  to  follow  the  line  of  least  resistance. 

[118] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Now  if  it  is  true  that  man  has  only  a  definite 
amount  of  psychic  energy  available  for  his 
daily  use,  and  if  he  divides  this  between  the 
world  and  his  religion,  between  God  and  the 
Devil,  it  will  follow  that  he  will  not  lead  a 
very  effective  life  in  either  sphere.  If  we 
scatter  or  divide  our  psychic  energy,  it  means 
a  life  of  inefficiency.  In  Matthew  6:21-24 
Christ,  in  speaking  of  the  impossibility  of 
serving  two  masters,  is  really  dealing  with 
a  case  of  the  divided  life.  Jesus  Christ  was 
the  greatest  student  of  human  nature  that 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  As  He  looked  about 
Him,  He  saw  many  people  vainly  trying  to 
serve  God  and  Mammon ;  in  other  words,  try¬ 
ing  to  lead  the  divided  life.  Now,  He  knew 
this  was  a  sheer  impossibility,  not  only  be¬ 
cause  God  is  a  jealous  God  and  will  brook  no 
divided  allegiance,  but  also  because  of  the 
nature  of  man.  There  is  a  psychological  rea¬ 
son  why  the  divided  life  cannot  be  lived  suc¬ 
cessfully.  In  other  words,  our  personalities 
are  so  built  that  we  cannot  serve  two  masters. 
The  soul  functions  as  a  unit.  The  psycholo¬ 
gists  tell  us  that  the  normal  human  person¬ 
ality  has  at  its  disposal  only  a  definite 
amount  of  psychic  energy.  Now,  if  an  at¬ 
tempt  is  made  to  divide  that  between  two 
masters,  it  should  be  evident  to  us  all  that 
discord,  and  lack  of  harmony  and  will  power 
is  going  to  result.  A  divided  life  is  a  life 
that  never  accomplishes  anything.  It  never 
functions  normally  and  efficiently.  As  Bishop 
Paget  is  quoted  in  the  Psychology  of  The 
[119] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Christian  Life  by  Pym,  “Surely  half-heart¬ 
edness,  wavering  and  faltering  faith,  or  love 
of  purpose,  the  hopeless  toil  of  living  two 
lives — this  is  the  source  of  at  least  much  of 
the  unhappiness  and  unrest,  the  weariness 
and  overstrain  and  break-down  in  modern 
life.”  When  we  try  to  serve  two  masters,  we 
so  scatter  our  energies  between  the  two,  we 
so  dissipate  our  powers,  that  we  really  have 
no  resources  available  to  serve  either.  Christ 
Himself  teaches  the  doctrine  of  the  necessity 
of  the  single  life  in  Matthew  6:21  and  22, 
where  He  says  that  where  our  treasure  is 
there  our  hearts  will  be  also.  He  further 
says  that  the  light  or  lamp  of  the  body  is 
the  eye ;  if  therefore  thine  eye  be  single,  thy 
whole  body  will  be  full  of  light.  When  Christ 
came  into  the  world  He  found  a  whole  host  of 
people  who  were  inefficient  in  their  Christian 
living.  They  were  below  par  morally  and 
spiritually.  They  were  not  living  up  to  the 
full  possibilities  of  their  souls.  There  was 
the  man  who  was  so  fretting  and  fuming 
about  his  daily  bread  that  he  was  dissipating 
his  energies  and  scattering  his  powers,  and 
was  not  in  position  to  live  the  efficient 
spiritual  life.  It  was  a  case  of  the  divided 
life.  There  was  the  man  who  was  coveting 
his  neighbor’s  wealth — just  as  many  people 
covet  today — and  his  life  was  so  divided  that 
it  could  do  little  either  for  the  Master  or  for 
the  Devil.  Christ  found  that  many  Chris¬ 
tians  were  under  the  domination  of  fear,  and 
were  not  availing  themselves  of  the  wonder- 

[120] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ful  possibilities  and  marvelous  potentialities 
of  faith.  I  think  that  there  are  many  Chris¬ 
tians  today  who  are  living  the  inefficient  life. 
They  are  below  par.  They  are  not  function¬ 
ing  normally.  They  are  trying  to  serve  two 
masters.  Christ  came  to  teach  us  how  to 
live  the  life  of  power  and  of  spiritual  effi¬ 
ciency.  One  of  the  first  suggestions  He 
would  make  is  that  we  should  cease  trying 
to  serve  two  Masters.  No  man  can  have 
spiritual  efficiency  who  is  living  the  divided 
life. 

This  then  is  the  tragedy  of  the  divided  life 
in  religion.  In  the  first  place,  it  means  the 
loss  of  power.  What  impresses  us  today  is 
the  lack  of  real  power  in  the  church.  She  has 
the  money,  she  has  the  personalities  at  her 
disposal — but  for  some  reason,  she  does  not 
seem  to  make  much  impress  on  the  world. 
We  have  lost  the  Pentecostal  power.  Why 
is  that  ?  I  firmly  believe  it  is  largely  because 
church  members  are  trying  to  live  the  di¬ 
vided  life.  We  are  flirting  with  the  world. 
We  are  one  day  under  the  flag  of  King  Jesus, 
and  the  next  we  are  doing  obeisance  to  over- 
lord  Mammon.  I  firmly  believe  that  if  for 
one  week  the  Christians  of  the  land  would 
quit  trying  to  live  the  divided  life  and  would 
surrender  completely  to  King  Jesus,  that  the 
church  would  possess  such  power  that  she 
would  sweep  the  world  to  Christ.  We  have 
at  our  disposal  today  the  same  Holy  Ghost 
that  the  Pentecostal  church  had — but  the 
chief  difference  is  that  while  they  lived  a  life 

[121] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

of  complete  consecration,  we  are  trying  to 
serve  two  masters.  I  believe  that  the  prin¬ 
cipal  explanation  of  our  loss  of  power  is  the 
divided  life.  To  the  church  of  the  twentieth 
century  God  says  in  commanding  tones,  Ye 
cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon. 

In  the  next  place,  the  divided  life  means 
loss  of  peace.  Many  Christians  complain 
that  they  do  not  know  the  peace  of  God  in 
their  lives.  The  trouble  is  that  they  have  a 
divided  personality.  They  are  not  one  in 
their  devotion  to  their  Lord.  Wherever  you 
have  schism,  and  division,  and  revolution, 
then  you  will  never  have  peace.  Peace  comes 
only  as  a  resultant  of  one  flag,  one  country, 
one  set  of  laws,  complete  harmony,  and  con¬ 
cord  in  the  government.  A  divided  authority 
means  revolution  and  war  and  turmoil.  A 
great  French  teacher  is  quoted  by  Pym  in  his 
Psychology  and  the  Christian  Life  as  saying, 
“Do  you  know  what  it  is  that  makes  man  the 
most  suffering  of  all  creatures?  It  is  that 
he  has  one  foot  in  the  finite  and  the  other  in 
the  infinite,  and  that  he  is  torn  between  two 
worlds.”  Yes,  that  is  the  trouble,  and  the 
reason  that  many  Christians  are  not  at  peace. 
They  have  one  foot  under  the  communion 
table  and  one  foot  out  in  the  gay  halls  of 
society.  They  have  one  foot  in  the  church 
aisles,  and  the  other  in  the  materialistic  mar¬ 
kets  of  the  world.  Man  tries  to  be  a  citizen 
of  two  worlds  and  makes  a  failure  of  living 
successfully  in  either.  I  have  seen  two 
classes  of  people  who  seemed,  as  far  as  out- 

[122] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ward  appearances  go,  to  have  a  measure  of 
satisfaction  in  life.  One  is  the  Christian  who 
is  trying  to  live  entirely  for  Christ.  The 
other  is  the  complete  worldling  who  has  no 
scruples  about  the  dangers  of  the  world,  and 
who  is  immersed  in  its  gay  life.  But  of  all 
the  miserable,  discontented,  ill-at-ease  people 
those  persons  who  are  trying  to  keep  at  the 
same  time  one  foot  in  the  kingdom  and  the 
other  in  the  world  are  the  most  wretched. 
You  cannot  serve  both  God  and  Mammon. 
That  is  not  alone  good  theology;  but  very 
sound  psychology. 

We  hear  much  today  of  efficiency  in  our 
mental  life.  Tansley  shows  that  there  is  a 
fundamental  quality  of  the  mind  by  virtue 
of  which  it  endeavours  to  maintain  a  mental 
equilibrium,  and  which  is  constantly  upset 
by  the  working  of  individual  instincts. 
Thinkers  are  pointing  out  the  psychic  value 
of  some  great  religious  concept  that  will 
unify,  harmonize,  and  rally  all  of  our  ener¬ 
gies  around  one  end.  Such  a  concept  is  resig¬ 
nation  to  the  will  of  God.  THE  ONLY 
EFFICIENT  LIFE  IS  THE  ONE  FULLY 
AND  COMPLETELY  CONSECRATED  TO 
GOD.  A  half-consecrated  life  then  is  an  in¬ 
efficient  one.  The  only  person  who  has 
genuine  efficiency  and  poise  and  mental 
power  is  the  fully  consecrated  Christian. 
Christianity  calls  us  to  the  life  of  full  surren¬ 
der  and  vital  power. 

[123] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Having  considered  the  challenge  of  the 
subconscious  to  our  religion  and  having  noted 
the  fundamental  need  for  internal  harmony 
in  the  inner  workings  of  the  mind,  we  are  in 
position  to  consider  the  method  of  education 
and  guidance  of  the  subconscious  that  is 
called  suggestion.  This  brings  us  to 

(HI.) 

THE  IMPORT  OF  SUGGESTION  TO 
THE  CHRISTIAN 

What  is  suggestion  ?  McDougall  in  his 
Social  Psychology  defines  it  as  follows :  “Sug¬ 
gestion  is  a  process  of  communication  result¬ 
ing  in  the  acceptance  with  conviction  of  the 
communicated  proposition  in  the  absence  of 
logically  adequate  grounds  for  its  accept¬ 
ance."  We  are  all  making  constant  use  of 
suggestion  in  our  daily  lives.  When  we  sug¬ 
gest  a  proposition  to  another,  we  mean,  that 
in  some  way  we  introduce  it  into  his  con¬ 
scious  mind.  The  term  comes  from  two  Latin 
words  meaning,  “carrying  under."  If  we 
think  of  the  soul  of  man  as  consisting  of  a 
conscious  chamber  and  a  subconscious  ante¬ 
chamber,  then  suggestion  is  the  method  by 
which  certain  ideas  are  deposited  in  the  ante¬ 
chamber  through  the  vestibule  of  conscious¬ 
ness.  In  general,  there  have  been  three 
views  as  to  the  function  and  extent  of  use 
for  suggestion.  One  position  is  that  sug¬ 
gestibility  is  a  condition  peculiar  to  hysteri- 

[124] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

cal  subjects,  and  is  practically  synonymous 
with  hypnotism.  This  school  holds  that 
ninety  per  cent  of  the  people  can  be  hypno¬ 
tized  ;  and  hence  that  suggestion  has  a  very 
wide  range.  The  second  view  is  that  sug¬ 
gestion  may  function  in  normal  minds,  but 
that  it  has  no  affinity  with  normal  mental 
operations.  It  is  connected  with  some  ob¬ 
scure  faculty,  and  its  power  is  liberated 
through  dissociation.  The  third  theory  is 
that  of  Bernheim  and  his  colleagues  of  Nancy 
and  is  that  all  people  are  suggestible,  but  that 
hypnotics  are  more  susceptible  through  the 
power  of  dissociation  that  takes  place  in 
their  minds.  Then  there  are  two  kinds  .of 
suggestion.  One  type  exists  where  some 
other  person  introduces  the  suggestion  in  the 
patient’s  mind,  and  is  called  hetero-sugges¬ 
tion.  The  other  kind  takes  place  when  the 
subject  himself  makes  the  suggestion  to  him¬ 
self,  and  is  styled  auto-suggestion.  A  great 
debate  has  taken  place  as  to  which  of  these 
is  the  more  potent  in  its  operation.  As  in  the 
case  of  many  a  great  historic  debate,  the 
truth  lies  not  in  either  extreme  but  in  a  mid¬ 
dle  position.  If  man  has  a  great  subconscious 
chamber  in  his  mind  in  which  various  ideas 
can  be  deposited,  then  it  stands  to  reason  that 
the  man  himself  can  make  these  deposits,  and 
also  that  some  one  else  can  introduce  new 
concepts  into  the  mental  vault,  provided  that 
he  gains  the  permission  to  do  this  from  that 
great  sentinel  or  censor  that  stands  guard 
between  the  conscious  and  subconscious 

[125] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

rooms  of  the  soul.  For  example,  I  can  make 
a  deposit  to  my  credit  in  the  bank,  and  also 
my  friend  can  put  money  to  my  balance. 
Both  methods  are  permissible.  But  undoubt¬ 
edly  it  is  more  beneficial  to  me  and  more  con¬ 
ducive  to  my  financial  self  respect,  if  I  am 
the  one  that  makes  the  deposits.  In  like 
manner,  in  mental  operations,  it  is  more  help¬ 
ful  to  my  soul  and  has  more  of  a  tendency 
to  mental  self-respect,  if  I  am  the  one  that 
makes  the  suggestions  rather  than  another. 
One  thing  is  certain:  even  in  successful  cases 
of  hetero-suggestion,  the  operator  must  in 
some  way  gain  control  of  the  workings  of 
that  mental  censor  that  stands  guard  at  the 
subconscious  mind.  We  see  a  case  of  this 
kind  in  hypnotism. 

Of  late  years  we  have  heard  a  great  deal 
of  the  working  of  auto-suggestion.  The  po¬ 
tency  of  this  power  for  physical  and  moral 
healing  has  been  greatly  emphasized  by 
Emile  Coue,  of  the  Nancy  School  in  France. 
He  holds  that  the  unconscious  self  is  the 
grand  director  of  all  of  our  functions.  Hence 
he  believes  that  if  an  organ  is  out  of  running, 
all  that  is  necessary  is  for  an  order  to  be 
placed  in  the  subconscious  mind  for  the  given 
part  of  the  body  to  operate  normally,  and 
that  soon  health  will  ensue.  He  holds  that 
the  imagination  in  our  mental  life  is  more 
effective  than  the  will,  and  he  compares  it 
to  a  wild  horse  and  to  an  uncontrolled  torrent 
of  water.  Now  auto-suggestion  is  the  method 
to  be  used  to  control  and  govern  this  torren- 

[126] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

tial  power  that  we  call  the  imagination,  to 
make  it  amenable  to  our  conscious  minds  and 
to  convert  it  from  an  enemy  into  an  ally. 
If  the  unconscious  mind  is  to  be  controlled, 
then  the  favorable  time  for  its  education  is 
when  the  conscious  mind  is  less  active  and 
when  it  is  easy  to  gain  access  through  the 
mental  censor  to  the  realms  of  the  subliminal. 
That  time  is  when  we  are  drowsy  at  night, 
just  before  we  go  to  sleep.  Hence  Cone  sug¬ 
gests  in  his  Self  Mastery  through  Conscious 
Auto-suggestion  that  every  morning  before 
getting  up  and  every  evening  as  soon  as  we 
are  in  bed  that  we  shut  our  eyes,  and  repeat 
twenty  times  in  succession,  moving  our  lips 
and  counting  mechanically  on  a  long  string 
with  twenty  knots  the  now  celebrated  but 
over-worked  phrase:  “Day  by  day  in  every 
way  I  am  getting  better  and  better.”  We 
have  witnessed  the  great  popular  interest  in 
auto-suggestion  that  swept  our  country  with 
the  coming  of  Emile  Coue  to  our  shores.  As 
has  been  the  case  with  most  popular  psycho¬ 
logic  fads  and  theories,  there  has  been  a  ten¬ 
dency  to  make  all  of  the  psychic  facts  fit  into 
this  peculiar  mould,  and,  disregarding  real 
philosophic  poise,  to  make  suggestion  the 
panacea  for  all  of  man’s  ills.  That  sugges¬ 
tion  is  a  means  of  education  of  the  subcon¬ 
scious,  there  can  be  no  denial.  But  sugges¬ 
tion  has  its  limitations,  and  needs  to  be  prop¬ 
erly  correlated  with  the  other  facts  of  man’s 
psychic  life.  Suggestion  is  like  a  two-edged 
sword  in  psychology,  and  may  cut  in  the  di- 

[127] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

rection  of  good  as  well  as  of  evil.  Suggestion 
may  beget  counter-suggestion  in  the  mind, 
and  stall;  a  train  of  associated  suggestions  in 
the  subconscious  that  will  produce  more  con¬ 
fusion  than  harmony.  Moreover  auto-sug¬ 
gestion  always  faces  the  great  limitation  that 
a  man  cannot  lift  himself  psychologically  by 
his  own  boot  straps.  After  the  popular  furor 
has  died  down  in  the  life  of  psychologic 
thought,  we  will  be  able  to  estimate  the  real 
significance  of  auto-suggestion,  and  the  real 
challenge  it  puts  to  Christianity. 

If  man  has  this  wonderful  subterranean 
vault  that  we  call  the  subconscious,  and  if 
the  ideas  implanted  there  exercise  such  a 
great  influence  on  our  bodily  functions,  then 
how  important  it  is  that  man  deposit  there 
only  good,  true,  pure,  and  noble  thoughts. 
If  we  plant  there  seed  thoughts  of  anger, 
malice,  lust,  failure,  fear  and  selfishness,  then 
if  this  theory  is  true,  we  should  expect  a  har¬ 
vest  of  failure,  licentiousness,  sickness,  and 
death  in  our  bodily  and  moral  beings.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  have  stored  our  sub¬ 
conscious  chamber  with  thoughts  of  love,  un¬ 
selfishness,  and  Godliness,  then  we  can  read¬ 
ily  expect  peace  and  happiness  in  our  whole 
personality.  This  whole  teaching  is  a  won¬ 
derful  commentary  on  the  text,  “The  wages 
of  sin  is  death.”  Yes,  we  can  readily  see  why 
it  means  death  physical  as  well  as  death 
spiritual.  We  begin  to  see  that  it  is  all-im¬ 
portant  as  to  the  nature  of  the  thought  de¬ 
posits  that  we  make  in  our  subconscious  store 

[128] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

houses.  Auto-suggestion  is  only  a  method 
of  making  deposits  of  health,  strength,  power 
in  this  subliminal  chamber.  As  I  was  read¬ 
ing  the  suggestions  of  Emile  Coue  for  im¬ 
planting  these  health-giving  ideas  of  power 
and  strength  in  the  subconscious,  I  could  not 
keep  from  thinking,  “Would  it  not  be  vastly 
better  to  implant  in  the  subconscious  store¬ 
house  quotations  from  the  word  of  God  rather 
than  suggestions  of  our  own  concoction. 
Happy  is  that  man  who  in  his  mental  exer¬ 
cises  fills  his  subliminal  chamber  with  apt 
quotations  from  the  word  of  God.”  The  won¬ 
derful  power  of  suggestibility  inherent  in 
ideas,  only  emphasizes  anew  the  importance 
of  storing  our  minds  with  the  word  of  our 
God.  If  Coue  is  right  in  his  theory  that  just 
before  going  to  sleep  is  the  proper  time  to 
implant  ideas  in  the  subconscious  mind,  then 
it  would  seem  advisable  to  Christians  to  make 
that  one  time  for  reading  the  word  of  God. 

Another  message  to  the  Christian  from 
the  doctrine  of  Auto-suggestion  is  that  it 
shows  psychologically  the  transcendent  power 
of  faith.  The  psychologists  tell  us  that  by 
conscious  will  action  we  can  no  more  make 
ourselves  to  be  good,  than  we  can  raise  our¬ 
selves  by  our  own  bootstraps.  Indeed  there 
is  a  law  called  the  law  of  reversed  action 
which  teaches  us  that  the  harder  we  strive 
to  eradicate  a  given  habit  with  our  wills,  the 
more  pronounced  we  make  it.  As  I  have 
noted  before,  Emile  Coue  holds  that  when  the 
imagination  and  the  will  are  in  a  struggle, 

[129] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  imagination  gets  the  victory.  This  would 
indicate  that  we  cannot  by  sheer  will  action 
overcome  a  bad  habit.  As  Pym  says  in  Psy¬ 
chology  and  the  Christian  Life,  “But  in  the 
heart  and  mind  of  man  the  Christian  life 
should  be  less  a  fight  than  a  faith.”  The 
New  Psychology  agrees  with  Paul  when  he 
says  in  Galatians  2:16,  “A  man  is  not  justi¬ 
fied  by  the  works  of  the  law.”  We  see  the 
folly  of  trying  to  make  ourselves  good  by 
following  a  set  of  rules,  or  moral  gymnastics, 
as  Benjamin  Franklin  once  endeavoured  to 
do.  The  New  Psychology  is  decidedly  against 
the  doctrine  that  man  can  reform  himself  by 
conscious  effort.  It  unites  with  Paul,  Augus¬ 
tine,  and  the  Reformers  in  pointing  to  the 
grand  doctrine,  THE  JUST  SHALL  LIVE 
BY  FAITH. 

The  New  Psychology  has  much  to  say  of 
the  effects  of  faith  and  of  fear.  The  advo¬ 
cates  of  auto-suggestions  say  unhesitatingly 
that  faith  is  at  the  bottom  of  any  success  that 
the  patient  achieves  along  these  lines.  He 
must  have  faith  in  himself,  faith  in  the 
method  that  he  is  adopting.  The  advocates 
of  the  New  Psychology  stress  the  importance 
of  faith  in  our  lives.  Usually,  however  they 
are  not  dealing  with  Christian  faith,  but  with 
faith  in  our  own  powers. 

I  believe  that  the  Christian  needs  a  new 
exploration  into  the  land  of  Christian  Faith. 
He  needs  to  learn  more  of  the  mighty  dy¬ 
namic,  and  the  heroic  powers  that  are  locked 

[130] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

up  in  this  wondrous  treasure  house  of  faith. 
We  have  construed  the  term  too  much  in 
static,  intellectualistic,  creedal  terms.  We 
need  to  learn  more  of  the  dynamite  wrapped 
up  in  Christian  belief.  We  need  to  learn 
anew  the  power  it  has  for  a  vital,  pulsating, 
victorious  Christian  life.  We  have  turned 
this  province  largely  over  to  the  Christian 
Scientist  and  the  Faith  healer.  While  they 
made  explorations  into  this  wonderful  land 
of  promise,  we  have  been  content,  we  ortho¬ 
dox  Christians,  to  remain  in  the  desert  of  a 
dead,  arid,  scholastic,  second-hand,  dead 
faith.  We  have  been  living  right  over  mines 
of  gold,  and  have  not  taken  the  trouble  even 
to  dig  into  them.  We  need  to  learn  more  of 
the  power  right  at  our  disposal  for  mental 
efficiency,  bodily  health,  a  victorious  per¬ 
sonality  in  this  wondrous  word,  faith. 

In  the  West  I  have  had  considerable  ex¬ 
perience  with  the  followers  of  Christian  Sci¬ 
ence  and  of  the  other  new  cults.  I  have 
usually  found  that  most  Christians  leave  the 
orthodox  folds  for  these  heresies,  not  for 
some  metaphysical,  moral,  or  even  theologi¬ 
cal  reason,  but  because  they  thought  they 
had  found  in  these  false  teachings  a  source  of 
power,  peace,  and  poise  for  their  bodily,  men¬ 
tal,  and  spiritual  beings  that  they  looked  for 
in  vain  in  the  folds  of  the  evangelical  church. 
It  is  invariably  the  discovery  of  some  new 
psychic  power  in  the  new  cult  that  attracts. 
As  E.  L.  House  says  in  the  Psychology  of 
Orthodoxy,  “Throughout  the  world  there  is 

[131] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

a  growing  distrust  of  academic  medicine,  a 
revolt  against  its  materialistic  dogmas,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  thousands  are  leaving  our 
great  historic  Christian  churches  for  Chris¬ 
tian  Science,  New  Thought,  Faith  Healing, 
and  Theosophy,  because  these  systems  ap¬ 
pear  to  create  an  atmosphere  of  faith,  hope, 
love,  cheerfulness,  kindness,  and  utterly  deny 
worry,  fear,  anger,  hate  and  criticism.  And 
the  people  have  learned  that  the  mind  at 
peace  with  itself  reflects  its  serenity  in  the 
unconscious  processes  of  the  body.” 

The  mission  of  the  Psychology  of  Religion 
should  be  to  show  that  it  is  unnecessary  to 
wander  into  forbidden  fields  to  discover  the 
wondrous  psychic  power  of  faith.  This  study 
should  be  the  key  that  will  help  unlock  all  of 
the  marvelous  stores  of  peace,  power,  and 
plenty  in  the  glorious  treasure  house  of 
faith.  We  have  had  a  mine  of  wealth  at  our 
disposal  and  did  not  know  it.  The  theologian 
has  always  pointed  out  the  close  connection 
between  sin  and  disease.  The  dogmatic  theo¬ 
logian  says  that  the  latter  was  sent  as  a 
penalty  for  the  broken  law.  The  Bible  says 
that  the  wages  of  sin  is  death — death  spirit¬ 
ual  and  physical.  Now  the  Psychology  of 
Religion  aims  to  show  only  from  a  psychic 
standpoint  the  truth  of  this  statement  that 
we  have  long  regarded  as  true  from  the  theo¬ 
logical  viewpoint.  It  shows  clearly  how 
wicked,  base,  and  impure  ideas  implanted  in 
our  subconscious  minds  bring  death  naturally 
and  automatically  to  our  mental  faculties  and 

[132] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

to  our  bodily  organs.  Not  only  would  it  show 
from  a  psychological  standpoint  that  sin 
brings  death,  but  it  would  also  make  clear  the 
fact  that  the  implanting  of  the  new  life 
through  faith  in  Jesus  should  act  as  the  anti¬ 
dote  to  sin  and  should  destroy  its  poison  both 
in  our  souls  and  in  our  bodies.  We  Christians 
in  our  faith  have  the  most  wondrous  treasure 
house  in  the  world,  and  we  have  not  even 
taken  the  trouble  to  enter  the  door  and  count 
our  riches. 

Let  us  note,  at  this  point,  the  beneficial  ef¬ 
fects  of  faith  and  the  baneful  influences  of 
fear.  Each  life  must  be  lived  in  the  one  or 
the  other  atmosphere.  We  will  either  live 
our  lives  surrounded  by  the  depressing  air 
of  fear  or  encased  in  the  ennobling  air  of  a 
pure  and  undefiled  faith.  Which  shall  it  be? 
It  is  for  us  to  choose  whether  we  will  sur¬ 
render  wholly  to  fear  or  to  faith.  Which  will 
be  the  dominant  note  of  our  life?  Harry 
Emerson  Fosdick  in  his  book  on  Faith  has  a 
chapter  in  which  he  contrasts  the  effects  of 
the  two  opposite  attitudes  in  a  man.  He  says 
that  fear  imprisons  the  soul  in  a  prison  house 
of  gloomy  doubts ;  while  faith  is  the  great 
liberator.  Fear  is  the  great  paralyzer;  while 
faith  empowers.  Faith  encourages;  while 
fear  weakens  and  discourages.  Where  are 
you  living?  Is  it  in  the  damp,  chilling  climate 
of  fear?  Or  have  you  moved  your  life  out 
into  the  bracing,  uplifting,  tonic  atmosphere 
of  an  heroic  faith  ?  The  kind  of  spiritual 
plant  of  character  that  you  will  one  day  pro- 

[133] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

duce  will  be  largely  determined  by  whether 
you  are  living  in  the  atmosphere  of  faith  or 
fear.  Let  us  notice  the  effects  of  these  two 
attitudes. 

At  this  point,  let  us  notice  the  results  of 
these  two  attitudes  on  a  man’s  own  faculties 
and  powers.  We  should  all  wish  so  to  live 
that  our  powers  will  act  at  the  highest  point 
of  efficiency.  No  normal  man  should  wish 
to  get  only  fifty  per  cent  efficiency  out  of  the 
operation  of  his  mental  and  moral  talents. 
Now  in  what  kind  of  a  clime  should  we  live 
in  order  to  get  the  highest  development  out 
of  our  faculties?  Surely  it  should  not  be  in 
the  climate  of  fear.  We  all  know  that  our 
powers  cannot  operate  to  their  fullest  extent 
when  we  are  always  afraid  of  something. 
Fear  lowers  our  vitality  and  our  efficiency. 
We  are  not  our  complete  selves  when  we  sur¬ 
render  to  its  destructive  powers.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  man  of  faith,  just  because  he 
lives  in  such  an  atmosphere,  raises  the 
strength  of  his  faculties  to  their  highest 
point.  When  you  surrender  to  fear  all  of 
your  days,  you  naturally  cannot  think  your 
profoundest  thoughts,  nor  feel  your  noblest 
sentiments,  nor  will  your  most  heroic  en¬ 
deavours.  Fear  cripples  and  depresses  our 
faculties ;  while  faith  builds  up  and  stimu¬ 
lates.  We  have  heard  much  of  late  of  the 
influence  of  a  wholesome  faith  on  our  bodily 
organs,  and  of  the  destructive  effect  of  fear. 
E.  L.  House  in  The  Psychology  of  Orthodoxy 
tells  us  that  Prof.  Gates,  of  Washington,  D. 

[134] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

C.,  has  made  a  number  of  experiments  with 
people  under  the  influence  of  harmonious 
thoughts,  and  again  with  the  same  persons 
under  the  influence  of  some  discordant  ideas. 
He  has  discovered  that  the  man  thinking  dis¬ 
cordant  thoughts  is  affected  throughout  his 
entire  organism.  He  concludes,  ‘‘Every  men¬ 
tal  activity  creates  a  definite  anatomical 
structure  in  the  being  which  exercises  the 
mental  activity.”  If  this  is  the  case,  then  it 
stands  to  reason  that  the  attitudes  of  fear 
and  faith  will  have  a  marvelous  influence  on 
our  bodily  structures.  I  sincerely  believe 
that  if  a  man  lives  all  his  days  in  the  damp, 
gloomy  cellar  of  fear,  that  even  his  physical 
powers  are  affected  and  their  vitality  low¬ 
ered.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  man  even  of 
weak  physique  dwell  all  his  days  in  the  at¬ 
mosphere  of  a  brave,  noble  faith,  I  sincerely 
believe  that  his  Christian  faith  will  tend  to 
strengthen  his  body. 

When  Jesus  came  into  the  world  He  found 
men  under  the  domination  of  fear.  He  knew 
full  well  that  a  Christian  could  not  live  a 
normal  life,  and  have  his  powers  function  to 
their  highest  efficiency,  when  living  in  such 
an  atmosphere.  One  of  the  destructive  forces 
from  which  He  would  deliver  men  was  fear. 
Have  you  ever  noticed  how  often  he  turned 
to  his  disciples  in  their  hour  of  turmoil,  and 
in  a  tone  of  deepest  love  and  often  in  terms 
of  affection  said  to  them,  “Fear  not.”  He 
would  lead  men  from  out  of  the  twilight  zone 
of  fear  into  the  full  daylight  of  luminous 

[135] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

faith.  “Fear  not,  little  flock,  it  is  your 
Father’s  good  pleasure  to  give  you  the  king¬ 
dom.” 

When  Jesus  was  in  the  world,  He  saw  a 
class  of  people  that  were  possessed  of  little 
faith.  He  uses  a  single  Greek  word,  Oligo- 
pistos,  to  describe  them,  and  we  may  well 
give  them  the  title,  “Little  Faith.”  Hastings 
in  his  book  on  Faith  gives  six  cases  of  little 
faith.  We  have  seen  those  people  among  us. 
They  walk  our  streets ;  they  enter  our 
churches.  In  Matthew  6:30  Jesus  speaks  of 
Mr.  Little  Faith  who  is  the  victim  of  worry. 
We  have  shaken  hands  with  him  every  day. 
The  good  Lord  would  try  to  banish  his  worry 
by  stating  the  grand  truth  of  God’s  Provi¬ 
dential  care  for  His  children.  Then  in  Matt. 
8:26  we  meet  Mr.  Little  Faith  who  is  con¬ 
quered  by  fear.  The  disciples  are  afraid  of 
the  storm.  We  have  all  met  this  gentle¬ 
men — yea  we  have  trodden  in  his  shoes  our¬ 
selves.  In  Matthew  14:31  we  find  Brother 
Little  Faith  yielding  to  cowardice.  It  is 
Peter  about  to  sink  when  he  is  walking  the 
waters.  Have  we  not  seen  Mr.  Little  Faith, 
the  cowardly  Christian,  afraid  to  work  in 
the  church,  afraid  to  launch  campaigns  for 
money,  afraid  to  take  any  forward  step  for 
the  kingdom?  In  Matthew  16:8  we  find  Mr. 
Little  Faith  the  slave  of  materialism.  It  is 
the  discussion  about  the  leaven  of  the  Scribes 
and  Pharisees,  and  the  disciples  persist  in 
taking  a  materialistic,  worldly  interpretation 
of  Christ’s  teachings.  Surely  this  brother  is 

[136] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

in  our  churches  today.  He  even  sits  on  our 
official  boards.  Finally  in  Matthew  17:20  we 
meet  Little  Faith  in  the  form  of  Half-belief. 
The  disciples  could  not  heal  the  lunatic  boy, 
and  Jesus  tells  them  that  little  faith  is  re¬ 
sponsible.  May  it  not  be  that  the  presence  of 
this  brother  in  our  churches  today  is  one 
great  reason  why  we  are  not  able  to  heal  the 
spiritually  sick  of  the  land.  Such  is  the  fate 
in  this  world  of  Little  Faith.  John  Bunyan 
tells  us  of  the  troubles  of  Little  Faith  on  his 
journeys.  He  was  set  upon  by  footpads, 
robbed  of  his  ready  money,  though  not  of  his 
jewels,  which  happily  for  him  were  too  se¬ 
curely  hid  for  their  fingers  to  purloin.  He 
had  to  beg  his  way  gloomily  through  life,  yet 
came  to  the  heavenly  city  in  the  end.  Is  not 
that  a  fit  description  of  the  average  Chris¬ 
tian  today?  The  Devil  has  set  upon  him; 
could  not  take  his  jewels  of  salvation  but 
has  robbed  him  of  his  ready  money  of  spirit¬ 
ual  efficiency,  peace,  power,  and  the  attri¬ 
butes  of  a  victorious  personality.  May  this 
study  in  the  psychology  of  religion  enable  us 
to  see  the  value  from  a  physical,  mental,  and 
spiritual  standpoint  of  a  robust  faith,  dis¬ 
close  to  us  the  marvelous  potentialities  in¬ 
herent  in  a  vital  faith  in  God,  and  enable  us 
in  the  future  to  hold  on  to  our  ready  money 
on  the  Christian  journey. 

At  this  point  there  is  one  caution  that  I 
would  register  in  regard  to  the  psychic  value 
of  faith.  I  refer  to  the  fact  that  a  genuine, 
dynamic  faith  is  based  upon  a  valid  object. 

[137] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Now  modern  religious  psychology  has  much 
to  say  of  the  power  of  faith,  but  it  is  little 
concerned  with  the  content  or  object  of  that 
faith.  It  bids  us  work  up  an  atmosphere  of 
faith  in  our  souls — but  as  to  the  content  of 
that  trust  it  is  little  interested.  Just  have 
faith — and  that  faith  may  be  in  the  hidden 
powers  of  your  own  subconscious  minds,  in 
Emile  Coue,  in  the  Over  Soul,  or  in  the  Christ 
within  you.  Such  a  belief  is  a  purely  emo¬ 
tional  affair  and  has  no  intellectual  content. 
Now  I  claim  that  sooner  or  later  the  object 
of  our  faith  affects  vitally  the  emotional  state 
that  is  aroused  in  our  hearts.  In  other 
words,  there  is  both  a  subjective  and  an  ob¬ 
jective  content  to  faith,  and  the  objective 
content  reacts  on  our  inner  feelings.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  I  may  put  out  to  sea  in  a  boat  that 
has  a  serious  leak  of  which  I  am  unaware. 
Now  my  faith  in  that  defective  boat  may  be 
sublime,  and  I  may  start  on  my  journey  with 
lofty  feelings.  But  finally  I  will  meet  with 
the  hard  reality,  and  find  that  the  boat  is 
sinking.  Where  then  is  my  lofty  subjective 
faith?  Even  the  most  intense  subjectivism 
must  finally  kick  against  hard  reality,  and 
be  aroused  from  its  emotional  slumbers. 
Thus  we  see  that  merely  to  have  any  kind  of 
faith  will  not  suffice  even  in  the  realm  of  the 
psychology  of  religion.  As  Dr.  Machen  well 
shows  in  Christianity  and  Liberalism,  the  ob¬ 
ject  of  the  faith  is  all-important.  The  only 
faith  that  will  give  real  psychic  peace,  power, 
and  plenty  is  a  rational  faith  in  a  historic 

[138] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Jesus  who  died  for  our  sins,  and  who  is 
abundantly  able  to  deliver  us  not  only  from 
the  guilt,  but  also  from  the  present  power  of 
sin  as  it  works  in  the  entire  range  of  our 
personality.  That  is  the  only  faith  that 
counts  in  the  psychology  of  religion. 

In  concluding  this  chapter  I  would  say  a 
few  words  about  the  significance  of  the  pres¬ 
ent  emphasis  on  the  HEALING  SIDE  of 
Christianity.  This  aspect  of  our  religion  is 
being  much  stressed  today.  We  have  seen 
how  it  was  the  inspiration  of  many  false  cults 
like  Christian  Science.  This  interest  in  the 
therapeutic  aspect  of  religion  makes  a  defi¬ 
nite  challenge  to  orthodox  Christianity.  Phy¬ 
sical  healing  is  being  stressed  today  within 
the  bounds  of  the  church.  Traveling  evange¬ 
lists  advertise  the  revival  of  healing  along 
with  the  revival  of  religion.  Thousands  flock 
to  hear  them  for  this  reason.  Now  since  the 
church  has  so  long  neglected  the  healing  min¬ 
istries  of  a  virile  faith,  it  is  natural  that  when 
prodded  on  by  the  false  cults  which  stress 
this,  that  there  should  be  the  swinging  of 
the  pendulum  to  an  extreme.  From  compara¬ 
tive  neglect,  physical  healing  in  the  church 
has  now  come  to  a  position  of  prominence. 
The  ministry  must  reckon  with  this  demand 
for  physical  ministrations  from  the  church. 
What  should  be  the  attitude  of  the  church? 
This  is  the  occasion  for  much  poise  and  sane 
thought.  The  wrong  attitude  may  lead  to 
grave  dangers  in  the  life  of  the  church.  In 
[ICO] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

view  of  this  situation  we  would  note  the  fol¬ 
lowing  points: 

First,  the  wholesome  effect  on  the  body  of 
a  healthy  soul-life  should  be  stressed.  This 
truth  should  never  have  been  allowed  to  pass 
into  obscurity.  Materialism  has  too  long 
reigned  supreme  in  the  field  of  healing.  Let 
us  go  back  to  the  figure  of  the  telephone  ex¬ 
change.  Suppose  that  I  cannot  get  good  ser¬ 
vice  over  my  telephone.  Now  this  condition 
may  be  due  to  several  causes.  There  may  be 
a  defect  in  the  receiver  or  transmitter;  or 
the  wires  may  be  down.  But  these  are  not 
the  only  causes  of  trouble.  Suppose  the  op¬ 
erator  is  careless,  or  discourteous,  or  ineffi¬ 
cient  in  general.  That  situation  will  cause 
bad  telephone  service  just  as  truly  as  for  the 
wires  to  be  down.  Now  in  the  human  tele¬ 
phone  exchange  the  operator  is  the  soul  or 
personality.  If  that  central  self  is  irritable, 
cross,  devoid  of  self  control,  inefficient,  it 
will  give  poor  connections  between  the  in¬ 
coming  and  out-going  nervous  currents. 
Hence  ill  health  will  result.  Thus,  the  con¬ 
dition  of  this  operator  that  I  call  the  soul  is 
going  to  affect  vitally  the  character  of  my 
body.  This  doctrine  the  preacher  should  em¬ 
phasize  today.  He  should  make  it  plain  that 
a  vital  Christianity  will  conduce  to  bodily  as 
well  as  moral  and  spiritual  health.  In  other 
words,  we  need  to  develop  a  sound  psychology 
of  religion.  By  this  I  do  not  mean  a  mere 
symposium  of  passing  fads  and  fancies  in 
psychology,  but  I  mean  a  recognition,  on  the 

[140] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

one  hand,  of  the  legitimate  needs  of  person¬ 
ality  as  shown  by  introspection  and  by  study, 
and  on  the  other  hand,  a  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  vital  Christianity  is  adequate  to 
satisfy  all  of  the  demands  of  our  souls. 

In  the  second  place,  I  would  note  that  there 
is  grave  danger  in  this  therapeutic  emphasis, 
that  in  the  consciousness  of  men  this  physi¬ 
cal  ministration  of  religion  will  become  more 
important  than  the  spiritual  aspect.  Action 
produces  reaction.  Having  neglected  so  long 
the  physical  bearing  of  vital  religion,  there  is 
grave  danger  that  today  it  will  become  the 
chief  side  of  Christianity.  Observation  shows 
that  where  the  physical  side  of  religion  is 
stressed,  it  is  likely  to  become  the  all-im¬ 
portant  thing.  Christ  found  that  the  people 
of  His  day  were  more  interested  in  the 
miracles  of  healing  than  in  the  miracles  of 
Grace.  My  observation  with  the  healing 
evangelists  today  is  that  the  healing  side  of 
their  ministry  is  liable  to  become  more  im¬ 
portant  in  the  eyes  of  men  than  the  spiritual 
message,  and  that  consciously  or  uncon¬ 
sciously  they  will  push  it  to  the  fore.  To  all 
who  are  enthusiastic  for  physical  healing, 
after  some  little  study  both  practical  and 
theoretical,  I  would  say,  “Remember  that  the 
chief  thing  in  religion  is  not  the  healing  of 
the  body,  but  the  healing  of  the  soul.  Christ 
did  not  die  primarily  to  save  the  bodies  of 
men  from  pain.  There  is  grave  danger  that 
your  doctrine  will  produce  a  race  of  men  that 
are  afraid  of  pain  above  everything  else.  We 

[141] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

will  become  self-indulgent  and  Epicurean. 
Let  us  never  forget  that  pain  has  a  definite 
ministry  in  the  world.” 

In  the  third  place,  I  would  note  that  much 
of  this  work  of  religious  healing  ignores  the 
supernatural  work  of  divine  grace.  King  in 
his  stimulating  book,  Nerves  and  Personal 
Power,  has  well  shown  how  our  nerves  can 
be  dominated  by  the  moral  self,  and  regu¬ 
lated  through  self-control.  Now  it  is  well 
to  stress  this  important  truth,  but  we  must 
remember  that  the  moral  self  can  have  no 
power  save  as  it  is  energized  from  above.  In 
many  of  the  teachings  about  the  healing  side 
of  Christianity  the  supernatural  aspect  is  in 
danger  of  being  ignored. 


[142] 


Chapter  VII. 


The  New  Psychology — Its  Limitations 

IN  this  chapter  I  wish  to  note  certain  chal¬ 
lenges  that  the  New  Psychology  makes  to 
Christianity,  and  finally  to  show  the  all- 
sufficiency  of  the  Gospel  to  meet  these.  At 
the  outset  let  us  note: 

(D 

THE  DANGER  IN  THE  ATTEMPT  TO 
MAKE  THE  NORMAL  PHENOMENA 
OF  LIFE  FIT  INTO  ABNOR¬ 
MAL  MOULDS! 

This  is  the  day  of  the  specialist.  Now 
there  is  grave  danger  in  the  very  special¬ 
ization  of  psychology.  We  have  lost  the  wide, 
coherent  viewpoint  of  the  old  psychology. 
The  science  has  become  largely  divorced  from 
philosophy  and  religion,  and  it  is  paying  the 
penalty  in  being  too  technical,  too  one-sided, 
and  too  much  inclined  to  run  off  at  a  tangent 
after  each  passing  theory.  It  is  labouring 
under  the  peril  of  exaggerated  emphases. 
Some  specialist  will  make  a  startling  discov¬ 
ery  that  explains  certain  data  in  his  own  nar¬ 
row  field,  and  in  his  enthusiasm  for  his  new 
theory  he  proclaims  that  all  past  explanations 
in  the  field  are  erroneous  and  that  his  “pet” 

[143] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

doctrine  will  amply  interpret  all  of  the  phe¬ 
nomena  of  the  soul.  I  think  I  can  illustrate 
this  danger  of  over-specialization  of  the  sub¬ 
ject  by  noting  briefly  the  work  of  some  of 
the  Continental  psychologists,  notably  Sig¬ 
mund  Freud  and  Carl  Jung.  Freud  has  un¬ 
doubtedly  done  some  valuable  work  in  the 
field  of  abnormal  psychology.  His  diagnosis 
of  hysteria  as  being  due  to  certain  painful 
conflicts  that  have  been  repressed  in  the  un¬ 
conscious  and  that  need  some  kind  of  a  re¬ 
lease  before  psychic  unity  is  restored — this 
is  all  most  valuable.  In  like  manner  his 
theory  of  the  important  part  that  the  unful¬ 
filled  wish  plays  in  life  is  illuminating.  He 
has  advanced  the  idea  that  our  dreams  are 
only  expressions  of  our  unfulfilled  desires, 
which  once  the  normal  inhibitions  of  wakeful 
life  are  removed  come  to  realization.  He  has 
taught  us  of  the  libido,  or  life-current  or 
psychic  energy,  that  is  attached  to  the  great 
primitive  instincts.  With  great  illumination 
he  has  traced  its  sinuosities  as,  blocked  in 
some  of  its  natural  flow,  it  winds  its  way 
hither  and  yon  seeking  some  pathway  of  dis¬ 
charge.  All  of  these  suggestions  in  regard 
to  the  flow  of  the  psychic  current  are  most 
helpful.  But  Freud  did  not  stop  with  these 
theories.  He  emphasized  the  importance  of 
the  sex  idea  in  psychology.  With  him  sex 
and  love  are  synonomous.  The  psychic  side 
of  sexuality  as  well  as  its  somatic  expression 
are  emphasized.  With  him  the  manifestation 
of  the  libido,  or  psychic  current,  is  confined 

[144] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

almost  to  the  channel  of  sex.  An  attempt  is 
put  forth  to  make  this  idea  explain  most  of 
the  phenomena  of  life.  Certain  actions  in 
childhood  are  due  to  certain  perverse  sex 
manifestations.  In  this  connection  Freud 
speaks  of  the  “Infantalism  of  Sexuality.” 
This  sex  current  in  its  devious  windings  is 
blocked  by  the  incest  barrier — and  this  stop¬ 
ping  of  its  flow  has  a  profound  effect  on  the 
life  of  the  soul.  Now,  Carl  Jung,  of  Zurich,  a 
disciple  of  Freud,  differs  from  his  master  in 
certain  aspects.  With  him  the  libido  has  a 
wider  range  than  mere  sex.  It  is  rather  the 
vital  push  in  life  and  corresponds  to  the  Elan 
Vital  of  Bergson.  It  is  manifested  in  growth, 
hunger,  and  in  all  human  development  and 
activity.  It  becomes  a  mighty  cosmic  force 
like  the  energy  of  physics.  He  differs  from 
Freud  again  in  regard  to  some  of  the  sex 
manifestations  of  the  libido,  or  psychic  cur¬ 
rent.  The  manifestations  of  childhood  are 
not  due  to  certain  perverse  displays  of  the 
libido,  but  are  preliminary  expressions  of  that 
sex  colouring  that  appears  in  later  life.  He 
speaks  of  the  three  stages  of  sex  manifesta¬ 
tion  :  pre-sexual,  pre-pubertal,  and  that  period 
from  puberty  to  the  time  of  maturity.  At 
puberty  the  child  frees  itself  from  the  pa¬ 
rental  dependence.  He  speaks  of  the  self- 
sacrifice  motive,  when  the  childish  feelings 
and  demands  are  slain,  and  the  duties  of  the 
individual  existence  are  assumed.  He  holds 
rather  to  a  dynamic  theory  of  life.  Man  may 
direct  the  libido,  or  psychic  current,  into  use- 

[145] 


•  • 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ful  channels,  or  allow  it  to  wander  into  for¬ 
bidden  pathways.  He  holds  that  phantasies 
and  myths  of  the  race  are  compensations  for 
the  unfulfilled  adaptations  and  aspirations  of 
life.  When  the  psychic  current  is  blocked, 
there  is  a  reanimation  of  past  ways  of  libido 
occupation.  No  myth  or  story  or  psychic 
symptom  of  any  kind  is  without  some  mean¬ 
ing.  There  is  nothing  lawless  in  the  psychic 
world.  We  can  abridge  the  abyss  that  sep¬ 
arates  us  from  antiquity  and  find  that  Oedi¬ 
pus  and  other  characters  are  still  with  us. 
There  is  a  wonderful  identity  of  elementary 
human  instincts.  The  Psycho-analyst  should 
study  historic  problems,  for  these  shed  light 
on  the  individual  problems  of  the  day.  These 
heroes  of  the  past  are  personifications  of  the 
human  libido,  imagery  of  our  secret  thoughts. 
Hence,  Jung  has  made  a  colossal  study  of  the 
myths  and  phantasies  of  the  past  to  illustrate 
his  thesis.  He  claims  that  in  these  studies 
we  can  see  the  secret  springs  of  impulse  be¬ 
neath  the  psychologic  development  of  the 
races. 

Now  we  have  discussed  these  methods  of 
the  new  psychologists  in  order  to  show  the 
reader  the  lengths  to  which  they  will  go  in 
their  attempts  to  fit  all  of  the  normal  data 
of  life  into  their  own  fantastic  theories.  It 
is  legitimate  to  study  cases  of  hysteria  and 
other  abnormal  phenomena,  and  to  form 
theories  to  explain  these  data — but  it  is 
illegitimate  to  try  to  make  these  peculiar 
hypotheses  explicable  of  all  the  normal  facts 

[146] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

of  life.  It  is  permissible  even  to  adopt  the 
sex  hypothesis  as  explicable  of  certain  ab¬ 
normal  factors,  but  when  the  theory  of  love 
is  made  the  dominant  theory  of  life,  and 
carried  to  morbid,  revolting  lengths,  then  it 
is  time  to  call  a  halt  on  fantastic  psychology. 
As  we  read  these  sex  hypotheses  of  the 
modern  psycho-analyst,  we  feel  that  we 
have  got  into  a  morbid,  unwholesome  atmos¬ 
phere,  and  we  yearn  for  the  bracing,  tonic 
air  of  a  sound  philosophy  and  an  inspiring 
theology  to  purify  the  foul  odors  of  incest 
and  sexual  psychology. 

That  many  of  the  suggestions  of  the  new 
psychologists  are  helpful,  cannot  be  denied. 
The  power  of  suggestion,  the  function  of  the 
subconscious  mind,  the  dangers  of  repressed 
conflicts  lodged  in  the  unconscious  have  been 
recognized  long  ago  by  people  of  common 
sense.  Of  course,  specialists  have  studied 
more  thoroughly  these  operations,  and  given 
these  factors  psychologic  nomenclature — but 
the  principles  are  as  old  as  the  hills.  Let  us 
take  these  theories  for  what  they  are  worth 
in  their  own  sphere — but  in  our  enthusiasm 
for  them  do  not  let  us  decide  that  all  past 
psychology  is  faulty  and  erroneous,  and  en¬ 
deavour  to  make  these  bizarre  doctrines  ex¬ 
plicable  of  all  that  is  in  heaven,  on  earth,  and 
in  the  waters  under  the  earth.  The  great 
lack  on  the  part  of  current  specialists  in  the 
field  of  psychology  is  philosophic  poise  and 
any  spirit  of  genuine  criticism.  If  there  ever 
was  a  time  when  the  coherence  of  view  of 

[147] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  philosopher,  and  the  authoritative  note  of 
the  preacher  is  needed  in  psychology  it  is 
now.  The  field  has  been  surrendered  too  long 
to  the  ultra-specialist.  All  of  man's  normal, 
waking  life  cannot  possibly  be  fit  into  the 
moulds  that  explain  paranoia  and  hysteria. 
We  need  explanations  of  these  abnormal 
cases — but  let  us  realize  the  very  limitations 
of  our  theories,  and  confine  them  to  their 
own  peculiar  sphere  of  operation. 

The  clarion  call  of  the  hour  in  the  field  of 
psychology  is  for  the  philosopher  and  the 
theologian.  The  former  is  demanded  to 
rescue  the  science  from  the  ravages  of  the 
one-sided  ultra-specialist,  and  to  give  it  that 
sanity,  that  balance,  that  poise,  and  that 
coherence  of  view  that  it  so  much  needs  and 
that  will  alone  restore  it  to  that  high  place  it 
deserves  as  the  science  of  the  soul  of  man. 
Then  the  preacher  or  theologian  is  needed  to 
emphasize  the  truth  that  man  is  created  in 
the  divine  image,  and  to  insist  in  authorita¬ 
tive  tones  that  the  human  soul  cannot  be 
adequately  studied  without  taking  into  ac¬ 
count  the  teachings  of  religion.  He  needs  to 
proclaim  with  an  air  of  finality  that  no 
adequate  theory  of  personality  can  possibly 
be  formed  that  does  not  consider  the  re¬ 
ligious  needs  of  man  and  also  the  revelation 
that  the  Bible  makes  as  to  the  soul.  The 
call  of  the  hour  is  for  the  preacher  to  meet 
bravely  the  challenge,  and  to  defend  fearlessly 
the  fundamental  revelations  of  Scripture  as 
to  human  personality.  Modern  psychology 

[148] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

cannot  dispense  with  the  authoritative  note 
that  he  and  he  alone  can  bring  to  the  study. 

The  next  caution  that  I  would  make  in 
regard  to  the  study  of  the  New  Psychology 
is  the  following: 


(ID 

THERE  IS  A  DECIDED  WEAKNESS  IN 
THE  ATTEMPT  TO  EXPLAIN  THE 
FUNDAMENTALS  OF  THEOLOGY, 
AND  ESPECIALLY  THE  NA¬ 
TURE  OF  CHRIST  BY  THE 
NEW  PSYCHOLOGY 

There  is  a  marked  tendency  today  on  the 
part  of  enthusiasts  of  the  New  Psychology  to 
attempt  to  explain  various  orthodox  religious 
conceptions  in  terms  of  the  new  science.  Thus 
E.  L.  House  in  his  popular  psychological  lec¬ 
tures  essays  to  explain  the  nature  of  the 
Trinity  in  this  way.  He  holds  that  the 
Father  is  the  Subconscious  Mind  of  God,  that 
the  Son  is  the  Conscious  Mind,  and  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  the  Super-Conscious  Mind.  In 
like  manner  have  there  risen  various  at¬ 
tempts  to  explain  the  life  of  Jesus  in  the 
nomenclature  of  the  New  Psychology.  His 
dual  nature  is  perfectly  simple  in  the  eyes 
of  many,  in  the  light  of  the  findings  of  this 
new  science.  The  Divine  nature  is  resident 
in  the  subconscious ;  while  the  human  dwells 
in  the  conscious  part  of  His  being.  This  ex¬ 
planation  of  the  mysterious  personality  of 

[149] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

our  Lord  is  satisfactory  to  many  Christians. 
Not  only  is  His  nature  made  to  fit  into  these 
peculiar  moulds  but  also  His  work  and  func¬ 
tions  are  forced  into  them.  His  healing  is 
due  to  His  marvelous  Faith,  and  to  His 
wonderful  use  of  the  powers  of  auto  and 
hetero-suggestion.  The  miracles  were  due  to 
the  operation  of  psychic  laws  that  the 
ancients  did  not  understand,  but  which  are 
intelligible  to  us  in  the  light  of  the  findings 
of  the  New  Psychology.  In  His  great  temp¬ 
tation  Jesus  had  to  meet  and  conquer  the 
promptings  of  the  three  primary  instincts  of 
man.  Remember,  that  in  the  eyes  of  the  new 
thinkers,  sin  is  only  a  violation  of  the  normal 
psychic  energy  that  belongs  legitimately  to 
each  primary  instinct.  Thus  in  the  tempta¬ 
tion  to  turn  stones  into  bread,  Jesus  was 
combatting  the  appeal  to  misuse  or  abuse 
the  instinct  of  passion.  This  was  only  a 
manifestation  of  the  sex  instinct.  In  the 
appeal  to  cast  Himself  down  from  the  temple 
and  win  the  plaudits  of  the  crowd,  Christ  was 
face  to  face  with  the  temptation  to  abuse  the 
social  instinct.  Finally  in  the  challenge  to 
Him  to  fall  down  and  worship  Satan  and  win 
universal  dominion,  the  Son  of  man  had  to 
meet  the  strong  attractions  of  a  misuse  of 
the  ego  complex.  Such  are  some  of  the  at¬ 
tempts  to  make  the  life  of  Jesus  fit  into  the 
moulds  of  the  New  Psychology.  What  shall 
we  say  in  answer  to  these  ingenious  theories  ? 
I  would  make  two  remarks,  viz: 


[150] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  involved  in  all 
these  attempts  the  danger  of  gross  anthro¬ 
pomorphism.  The  early  heathen  accused  the 
Christian  apologists  of  trying  to  make  God 
in  the  image  of  man.  To  Celsus  they  seemed 
like,  “frogs  in  council  on  a  marsh,  worms  in 
synod  on  a  dunghill,  quarreling  as  to  which 
is  the  greatest  sinner,  and  yet  declaring  that 
God  announces  all  things  to  us  beforehand. 

.  .  .  .  Land  and  water,  air  and  stars,  all 

things  are  for  our  sake  and  are  appointed  to 
serve  us.”  If  the  early  thinkers  so  appeared 
to  Celsus,  I  wonder  how  our  devotees  of  the 
New  Psychology  with  their  heroic  attempts 
to  make  God  and  Jesus  conform  to  the  tenets 
of  their  science,  really  would  look  in  his 
critical  eyes.  It  always  has  been  a  taunt 
hurled  at  Christian  Theology  that  it  tried  to 
make  God  in  the  image  of  man,  and  it  would 
seem  that  the  new  thinkers  have  fallen  into 
that  trap.  I  would  say  to  these  followers  of 
the  New  Psychology  what  Shakespeare  said 
in  Hamlet,  viz:  “There  are  more  things  in 
heaven  and  earth,  Horatio,  than  are  dreamt 
of  in  your  philosophy.”  Let  us  be  truly 
thankful  that  there  are  more  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  than  are  dreamt  of  in  the 
morbid  investigations  and  weird  theorizings 
of  many  of  our  current  thinkers.  In  regard 
to  the  fundamentals  of  religion,  we  had  better 
confine  ourselves  to  the  revelation  of  the 
Bible,  to  the  theology  of  the  Fathers  and  the 
confessions,  and  not  try  to  be  wise  above 
what  has  been  written.  Let  us  confess  in 

[151] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

humility  that  we  cannot  fit  into  purely  human 
moulds  such  doctrines  as  the  Trinity,  and 
the  dual  Nature  of  Christ. 

The  term  “The  Psychology  of  Jesus”  is 
somewhat  ambiguous.  If  by  it  we  mean  an 
attempt  to  make  the  personality  of  Jesus 
conform  to  the  moulds  of  modern  psychologic 
speculation,  then  all  of  the  objections  that  I 
have  outlined  above  apply  to  such  a  position. 
But  if  by  the  term  “The  Psychology  of  Jesus” 
we  intend  to  describe  the  teachings  of  Christ 
Himself  as  to  the  soul  of  man  and  its  laws, 
then  it  is  truly  a  most  valuable  study.  He 
was  the  Master  Psychologist  of  all  time.  It 
is  said  of  Him  that  He  knew  what  was  in 
man — and  that  is  vastly  more  than  can  be 
said  of  many  of  our  ultra-specialists.  It 
would  well  repay  any  student  of  psychology 
to  study  carefully  the  teachings  of  this 
Master  Mind  of  all  the  ages  in  regard  to  the 
things  of  the  spirit.  If  this  is  what  we  mean 
by  “The  Psychology  of  Jesus,”  then  give  us 
more  of  such  investigation  and  study. 

In  the  second  place,  I  would  note  in  all 
these  attempts  to  explain  the  personality  of 
Jesus  along  psychologic  lines,  the  danger  of 
destroying  the  uniqueness  of  His  person. 
There  is  a  certain  animus  in  this  fantastic 
attempt  to  explain  Jesus  by  the  New  Psy¬ 
chology.  It  is  not  purely  speculative  in  its 
interests,  nor  inspired  entirely  by  the  laud¬ 
able  desire  to  make  all  the  clearer  the  nature 
of  His  blessed  personality.  It  is  in  line  with 

[152] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

all  of  the  attempts  of  Naturalistic  Evolution 
and  its  strong  ally,  the  New  Psychology,  to 
do  away  entirely  with  the  supernatural.  I 
will  discuss  this  point  more  fully  in  my  last 
chapter.  The  grave  danger  is  that  Jesus  will 
be  made  purely  a  product  of  evolution,  a  child 
of  His  times,  and  that  His  personality  will  be 
evacuated  of  all  that  savors  of  true  Deity. 
We  can  well  say  to  the  New  Psychology, 
“You  have  taken  away  my  Lord,  and  I  know 
not  where  you  have  laid  Him.”  Truly  in 
Germany,  where  many  of  the  tenets  of  this 
science  have  originated,  they  have  taken  Him 
away  from  the  orthodox  fold.  Under  the 
inspiration  of  the  abnormal  psychology,  they 
have  given  us  the  theory  of  the  Pathological 
Jesus.  He  is  a  fit  study  for  the  alienist,  a 
rare  case  of  paranoia.  Such  is  the  Christ  of 
the  radical  school.  This  would  seem  to  be 
the  reductio  ad  absurdam  of  all  attempts  to 
make  Jesus  conform  to  the  tenets  of  abnor¬ 
mal  psychology.  It  has  brought  us  once  more 
into  the  blind  alley  of  pure  negation. 

In  like  manner  the  New  Psychology  would 
essay  to  explain  other  Biblical  phenomena  by 
its  peculiar  tenets.  Thus  the  Apostle  Paul 
is  the  victim  of  a  perverted  sex  complex,  the 
Oedipus  complex.  In  Greek  mythology  Oedi¬ 
pus  has  an  unnatural  love  for  his  mother 
Jocasta,  kills  his  father,  Laius,  and  marries 
her.  Now  Paul  was  a  sexual  abnormality. 
Because  his  own  love  life  is  violently  re¬ 
pressed,  he  seeks  compensation  in  a  strict 
observance  of  the  Jewish  law.  On  the  road 

[153] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

to  Damascus  he  suffers  an  anxiety  attack,  a 
sudden  welling  up  of  a  repressed  emotion. 
By  the  principle  of  ambi-valence,  or  law  of 
opposites,  by  which  an  emotion  is  turned  into 
one  of  opposing  character,  he  transfers  to 
himself  the  cruelty  which  he  had  afflicted  on 
others,  and  his  hatred  of  Jesus  is  turned  to 
love.  Such  is  the  account  of  Paul’s  conver¬ 
sion  by  some  adherents  of  the  New  Psychol¬ 
ogy.  What  shall  we  say  of  it?  All  I  would 
say  is  that  there  is  nothing,  absolutely  noth¬ 
ing,  in  the  Scriptures  to  indicate  that  Paul 
was  the  victim  of  the  Oedipus  complex  or 
that  his  conversion  was  due  to  the  law  of 
ambi-valence.  It  is  a  law  of  science  that 
when  an  hypothesis  does  not  fit  into  the  facts 
in  a  given  case,  that  the  sooner  it  can  be 
abandoned,  the  better. 

In  concluding  this  chapter  I  wish  to  note 
as  Christianity’s  answer  to  the  challenge  of 
the  New  Psychology: 

(111.) 

THE  ALL-SUFFICIENCY  OF  THE  GOS¬ 
PEL  FOR  MAN’S  EVERY 
PSYCHIC  NEED 

The  purpose  of  this  study  in  the  psychol¬ 
ogy  of  religion  is  to  make  it  clear  to  the 
reader  that  he  does  not  have  to  go  into  any 
of  the  passing  cults  of  the  hour  in  order  to 
find  satisfaction  for  the  needs  of  his  per¬ 
sonality,  but  that  in  the  religion  of  Jesus  he 

[154] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

has  the  bread  of  life  for  his  soul.  This  science 
should  not  strive  to  glorify  itself,  but  should 
be  the  hand-maiden  of  Christianity.  Like 
John  the  Baptist,  it  should  be  willing  to 
say  in  complete  humility,  “I  must  decrease, 
but  it  must  increase.”  Now  it  would  require 
the  compass  of  an  entire  volume  to  point  out 
the  adequacy  of  the  Gospel  to  satisfy  all  of 
the  psychological  aspirations  of  man.  We 
can  only  illustrate  the  thesis  that  we  have 
taken,  and  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  develop 
the  position  more  fully  from  the  Scriptures. 
The  important  consideration  is  that  the 
reader  shall  realize  that  the  Gospel  is  all- 
sufficient  for  his  personality,  and  that  it  is  not 
necessary  for  him  to  go  to  outside  philoso¬ 
phies  for  his  soul  to  be  satisfied.  To  make 
clear  this  position  we  should  notice,  in  the 
first  place 

THE  ALL-SUFFICIENT  CHRIST 

If  we  would  realize  the  adequacy  of  the 
Christ  for  the  soul’s  every  desire,  we  have 
only  to  examine  closely  the  very  terms  that 
are  used  to  describe  His  relationship  to  the 
believer.  He  is  said  to  be  the  Water  of  life, 
the  Bread  of  life,  the  Door,  the  Word.  Now 
in  these  terms  we  have  left  the  realm  of  the 
luxurious  and  the  accidental,  and  have  en¬ 
tered  the  sphere  of  the  indispensable  and  the 
essential.  There  are  many  articles  that  at 
different  times  we  might  put  in  the  ranks 
of  the  non-essential  and  the  luxurious — but 
bread  and  water  hardly  belong  in  those  cate- 

[155] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

gories.  Men  of  all  ages,  climes,  and  condi¬ 
tions  regard  these  as  at  the  basis  of  all  life, 
and  as  absolutely  essential  to  their  material 
and  spiritual  well-being.  We  have  entered 
the  sphere  of  the  vital,  the  necessary,  the 
sustaining,  the  every-day  need.  Since  Jesus 
Christ  stands  as  bread  and  water  to  all  our 
religious  ideals  and  cravings,  let  us  consider 
how  He  gives  strength  to  the  various  parts 
of  a  man’s  personality.  Our  method  will  be 
to  examine  the  three  outstanding  faculties 
of  the  human  ego,  and  to  see  just  how  He 
sustains  each  of  them.  Let  us  see  how  He 
is  adequate  for  all  of  the  aspirations  and 
needs  of  our  intellects,  sensibilities,  and 
wills : 

In  the  first  place,  He  satisfies  all  of  the 
desires  of  our  intellects.  But  at  this  point 
some  one  will  ask,  “Ought  man  to  bring  any 
intellectual  demands  to  religion?”  First  of 
all,  the  technical  scholar  may  take  this  posi¬ 
tion.  He  may  claim  that  if  man  has  any  ques¬ 
tions  about  the  universe  and  about  his  own 
personality,  he  should  take  them  to  science 
and  philosophy,  and  let  these  more  exact 
branches  of  knowledge  satisfy  his  queries. 
He  further  claims  that  religion  is  not  in¬ 
tended  to  satisfy  the  intellectual  cravings  of 
man ;  but  is  intended  primarily  to  charm  his 
emotions,  for  it  is  founded  not  on  intellectual 
principles,  but  upon  the  feelings.  Such  is  the 
position  of  many  a  thinker.  He  thinks  that 
religion  does  not  deal  sufficiently  in  exact 
formulas  and  in  mathematical  principles,  to 

[156] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

be  able  to  answer  any  of  the  real  questions 
of  life.  To  a  person  who  holds  such  a  posi¬ 
tion,  our  thesis  that  Christ  is  sufficient  to 
satisfy  all  of  the  intellectual  needs  of  the 
soul,  has  no  meaning.  But  such  a  thinker 
should  realize  that  there  are  many  questions 
that  science  by  its  method  of  dealing  with 
sense  data  and  with  logical  processes  exclu¬ 
sively  cannot  handle.  You  cannot  deal  with 
matters  of  the  spirit  with  a  measuring  rod, 
nor  with  the  tools  of  a  laboratory.  Science 
then  by  the  very  limitations  of  its  nature  can¬ 
not  answer  all  of  life’s  questions.  In  like 
manner,  philosophy  is  incapacitated  to  an¬ 
swer  all  of  the  questions  that  a  man  would 
ask.  Its  colossal  attempts  to  give  a  solution 
to  the  problems  that  relate  to  man’s  destiny 
have  been  remarkable — but  they  have  been 
one  stupendous  failure.  It  has  succeeded  in 
raising  the  questions,  but  has  never  an¬ 
swered  them.  It  cannot  answer  them,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  it  would  make  the 
human  intellect,  and  that  in  sin,  the  measure 
and  source  of  truth — whereas  we  need  a 
divine  revelation  to  give  us  any  finality  in 
matters  and  questions  of  religion.  But  some¬ 
one  will  object  that  even  if  these  questions 
cannot  be  answered  by  science  and  philoso¬ 
phy,  religion  by  its  very  nature  is  unfitted  to 
answer  them.  They  hold  that  it  has  no  in¬ 
tellectual  foundation,  and  contains  beliefs 
contrary  to  science  and  to  philosophy.  But 
could  religion  persist  if  it  contained  truths 
that  are  contrary  to  those  that  are  valid  in 

[157] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

other  branches  of  knowledge?  Is  it  likely 
that  God’s  supernatural  Revelation  would 
contradict  His  Natural  one?  No,  religion 
could  not  long  persist  if  its  truths  did  not 
cohere  with  the  other  facts  that  we  believe  in 
science  and  philosophy.  The  mind  cannot  be 
divided  into  air-tight  compartments — and 
part  of  it  believe  a  given  fact  true  in  Chris¬ 
tianity,  and  yet  not  hold  that  it  is  valid  in 
science  and  in  philosophy.  Man  is  not  made 
in  that  fashion.  Religion  must  be  founded 
upon  truths  that  while  they  transcend  the 
intellect,  yet  do  not  contradict  its  principles. 
Such  is  our  answer  to  the  position  of  the 
professional  scholar.  Then  there  is  the  atti¬ 
tude  of  the  man  who  is  not  a  technical  scholar 
in  religious  and  scientific  matters.  He  says, 
“Well,  I  do  not  want  to  bother  about  Christ’s 
satisfying  my  intellectual  needs.  When  I  go 
to  church  I  want  to  leave  all  of  my  intellec¬ 
tual  problems  at  home.  It  is  too  much  trou¬ 
ble  to  think  in  church.”  Such  a  man  likes 
to  bask  in  intellectual  indolency  and  som¬ 
nolency  in  the  pew  and  to  drink  in  a  few 
high-sounding  and  pleasing  phrases  that  may 
fall  upon  his  ear.  But  he  does  not  believe  in 
thinking  in  religion.  To  him  I  would  reply 
that  we  cannot  have  any  real  religion  that  is 
worthy  of  the  name  that  is  not  founded  upon 
truths  that  appeal  to  the  intellect.  The  only 
religion  that  will  abide  during  these  stirring 
days  when  heresies  are  so  rife,  is  one  that 
has  an  intellectual  foundation. 


[158] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Having  noted  that  man  should  have  cer¬ 
tain  intellectual  demands  in  the  sphere  of  re¬ 
ligion,  I  would  note  that  Christ  is  able  to 
satisfy  all  of  the  needs  of  the  reason.  In  the 
first  place,  he  satisfies  all  of  the  demands  that 
we  might  make  upon  Him  as  a  Saviour.  Our 
intellects  can  find  no  defects  in  His  makeup. 
Stop  some  time,  and  plan  just  what  kind  of 
a  Saviour  man  needs.  Then  apply  these  in¬ 
tellectual  demands  to  Christ,  and  you  will 
find  that  with  His  human  and  divine  natures 
in  one  person  He  satisfies  all  of  them.  Thus 
the  intellect  must  admit  that  Christ  is  an 
all-sufficient  Saviour.  Then  having  admitted 
Him  as  a  Saviour,  we  find  that  He  answers 
the  other  questions  that  we  might  ask. 
There  is  the  problem  of  immortality.  Phi¬ 
losophy  and  science  have  tried  to  find  proof 
that  a  man  will  live  again  after  death.  They 
have  tried  to  do  it  by  subtle  philosophic  ar¬ 
guments,  or  by  the  method  of  communication 
through  spirits  in  psychic  research.  All  of 
their  proofs  have  been  unsatisfactory.  But 
Jesus  Christ  answers  these  questions  thor¬ 
oughly.  By  His  teachings  He  shows  that  a 
man  will  live  again,  and  then  by  His  own 
death  and  resurrection  He  gives  tangible 
proof  that  man  is  immortal.  He  has  brought 
life  and  immortality  to  light.  Thus  He  an¬ 
swers  all  of  the  other  questions  of  a  religious 
nature  that  a  man  may  ask.  There  is  the 
subtle  problem  of  the  relation  of  justice  and 
love  in  the  Divine  Being.  Show  us  the 
Father  and  it  sufficeth  us.  What  is  the  true 

[159] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

philosophy  of  history?  These  questions  and 
others  find  answer  in  Jesus  who  is  the  image 
of  the  invisible  God,  the  alpha  and  omega 
of  history,  and  God’s  Reconciliation  for  sin. 

Thus  we  see  that  Jesus  and  He  alone  is 
sufficient  for  our  intellectual  aspirations. 
There  has  always  been  a  party  in  the  Church 
who  believed  that  because  of  their  superior 
intellectual  endowments,  the  simple  Christ 
was  not  sufficient  to  satisfy  their  rational 
needs.  Hence  they  have  constructed  for 
themselves  a  “religion  plus”  —  plus  New 
Thought,  or  Christian  Science,  or  Psychical 
Research.  The  simple  Christ  was  not  enough 
for  them.  Paul  found  just  such  a  condition 
in  the  Colossian  Church.  To  the  simple  Gos¬ 
pel  they  had  grafted  on  a  weird  mixture  of 
oriental  philosophy,  theosophy,  and  mysti¬ 
cism  that  we  might  style  ancient  Eddyism. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  the  heresy  called 
Gnosticism.  Paul  replied  to  them  that  Jesus 
needed  no  such  increment  from  philosophic 
lore  added  to  the  Gospel.  He  and  He  alone 
was  sufficient  to  answer  all  of  their  prob¬ 
lems  and  satisfy  all  of  their  subtle  philo¬ 
sophic  needs.  In  Colossians  2:3  he  speaks 
of  Christ  in  whom  are  hid  all  of  the  treas¬ 
ures  of  wisdom  and  knowledge.  He  is  the 
mine  of  profound  truth  at  which  man’s  puny 
intellect  may  dig  for  ages,  and  still  find 
greater  treasures  of  truth  than  it  can  ever 
master. 

To  all  today  who  think  that  the  simple 
Christ  is  not  enough  for  all  their  intellectual 

[160] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

needs  and  that  they  must  lug  in  added  au¬ 
thorities  on  science,  and  health,  and  phi¬ 
losophy,  I  would  say,  “Go  back  and  work 
more  deeply  the  mine  Christ  Jesus.  That  has 
in  it  treasures  yet  untouched,  and  which  will 
more  than  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  your 
intellects.”  The  problems  that  cluster  about 
the  personality  of  our  Blessed  Lord  are  acute 
and  subtle  enough  for  all  the  philosophic 
dialectic  and  metaphysical  acumen  of  the 
most  profound.  Jesus  meets  the  challenge 
of  modern  philosophy  and  psychology  for  a 
deeper  stimulation  of  thought.  That  He 
amply  meets  the  challenge  I  would  point  you 
to  the  countless  books  and  speculations  that 
have  risen  since  that  day  in  the  long  ago 
when  the  Chalcedonian  Fathers  framed  their 
most  precise,  scriptural,  and  scientific  inter¬ 
pretation  of  His  person  down  to  the  debates 
over  His  Person  that  are  rife  in  the  Modern¬ 
ist  movement  of  today. 

In  the  second  place,  Christ  satisfies  all  of 
our  emotional  needs.  Man  not  only  thinks, 
but  he  also  feels.  He  has  an  emotional  fac¬ 
ulty  as  well  as  an  intellectual.  Perhaps  this 
is  the  side  of  His  being  that  in  the  sphere 
of  religion  has  been  most  stressed  in  the 
past.  Religion  and  the  feelings  have  always 
been  vitally  associated.  There  are  a  small 
class  of  people  mostly  of  a  scientific  temper, 
who  claim  that  we  should  stifle  the  emotions, 
for  they  hold  that  the  feelings  interfere  with 
the  intellectual  apprehension  of  the  truth. 
But  man  is  not  pure  intellect — and  it  is  nat- 

[161] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

ural  and  proper  that  the  emotions,  if  piloted 
by  the  intellect,  should  react  on  the  presen¬ 
tation  of  certain  great  truths.  The  very  na¬ 
ture  of  an  emotion  is  that  it  is  an  attitude 
that  the  whole  man  assumes  towards  certain 
truths.  We  naturally  assume  some  attitude 
of  approval  or  disapproval — pleasure  or  pain 
— towards  every  object  before  the  mind. 
Should  we  fail  to  respond  in  an  emotional 
way  to  the  greatest  truths  of  all — those  in 
religion?  The  only  caution  that  should  be 
observed  in  the  exercise  of  the  emotions  is 
that  they  should  be  guided  by  the  operation 
of  the  intellect.  Otherwise  they  may  bring 
us  into  wild  extravagances  and  emotional 
excesses. 

Upon  what  do  our  emotions  feed?  They 
may  be  nourished  by  various  objects.  They 
may  flare  up  under  the  excitations  of  a  melo¬ 
drama;  or  they  may  burn  fiercely  as  we  sit 
and  read  of  the  sad  plight  of  the  heroine  in 
a  story.  But,  after  all,  the  highest  and 
noblest  object  to  arouse  the  emotions  is  the 
person  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  The  loves 
that  He  excites  are  the  noblest ;  and  the 
hatreds  that  He  kindles  are  the  fiercest,  and 
yet  the  most  free  from  the  lower,  debasing 
elements  of  human  nature.  He  is  ever  call¬ 
ing  upon  men  to  love  the  highest  and  to  hate 
that  which  is  low  and  defiling.  In  order  for 
an  emotion  to  be  of  the  highest  type,  two 
conditions  are  necessary.  In  the  first  place, 
the  object  upon  which  the  emotion  reacts 
must  be  lofty;  and  in  the  second  place,  the 

[162] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

feeling  towards  that  object  must  be  elevated. 
Often  one  condition  is  satisfied  without  the 
other.  Thus,  a  mother  may  cherish  the 
noblest,  most  self-sacrificing  love  towards  a 
wild,  worthless  boy.  Here  the  emotion  is  noble 
enough,  but  the  object  is  low.  Then  the  per¬ 
son  of  Christ  may  be  presented  to  a  sinner, 
and  he  in  his  self-will  may  rebel  and  come  to 
the  point  where  he  hates  the  Lord  Jesus.  In 
this  case  the  object  is  lofty,  but  the  corres¬ 
ponding  emotion  towards  it  is  low.  But 
Jesus  Christ  when  He  appeals  to  our  emo¬ 
tions,  satisfies  both  of  these  conditions.  In 
the  first  place,  His  person  is  the  very  highest 
object  in  the  universe  on  which  our  feelings 
can  be  attached.  Then  in  the  second  place, 
His  Spirit  engenders  within  us  the  proper 
feelings  of  love  and  veneration  towards  that 
blessed  person.  When  Christ  would  restore 
to  favor  the  cowardly  Peter  by  His  three-fold 
question,  “Lovest  thou  Me  more  than  these,” 
as  recorded  in  John  21:15,  I  would  have  you 
note  that  the  appeal  is  made  to  love,  or  the 
emotional  side  of  His  personality.  He  asks 
Peter  to  present  Him  with  a  purified,  refined, 
unsefish,  fully-sanctified  emotion. 

In  the  last  place,  Christ  satisfies  the  de¬ 
mands  of  our  wills.  The  volition  is,  after  all, 
the  most  important  faculty  of  man  in  re¬ 
ligion.  The  intellect  may  place  the  given 
data  before  the  ego ;  the  emotions  may  as¬ 
sume  an  affective  attitude  in  the  matter,  but 
it  is  for  the  will  to  make,  in  the  light  of  these 
facts,  the  great  decision.  It  is  the  will  of 

[163] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

man  that  determines  his  destiny  for  time 
and  eternity.  It  is  not  what  you  think,  not 
what  you  feel  about  Jesus  Christ,  but  what 
wilt  thou  do  with  Jesus  that  is  called  the 
Christ,  that  will  determine  your  position  in 
this  life  and  in  the  world  to  come.  Now  if 
the  will  is  the  faculty  in  man  to  which  re¬ 
ligion  most  appeals,  then  surely  it  needs 
strengthening  at  all  times.  How  prone  our 
wills  are  to  grow  weak;  to  lose  their  power 
of  resistance  to  evil ;  to  lose  the  ability  wisely 
to  make  great  decisions.  They  become  weak 
and  flaccid,  incapable  of  acting  in  great  emer¬ 
gencies,  and  they  need  some  great  dynamic 
applied  to  them  that  will  energize  them  for 
the  great  temptations  of  life.  Humanity 
today  needs  a  spiritual  dynamic  for  its  will 
as  it  needs  nothing  else.  The  world  under 
the  stress  of  crisis  has  had  its  high  tide  of 
moral  idealism  when  it  had  lofty  visions  of 
unselfish  service,  of  the  brotherhood  of  na¬ 
tions,  of  the  abolition  of  war;  but  this  has 
been  succeeded,  as  we  have  recently  noted  in 
current  history,  by  an  ebb  tide  of  material¬ 
ism,  of  intense  nationalism,  and  of  selfish¬ 
ness.  Man  needs  a  sustaining  moral  dy¬ 
namic  for  his  will.  It  is  not  more  ideas  that 
he  needs,  but  more  power  that  will  enable 
him  to  live  up  to  these  ideas.  Christ  as  the 
great  Redemptive  Power  is  the  only  adequate 
spiritual  dynamo  for  man’s  will. 

To  those  in  great  crises  as  well  as  to  those 
who  are  traveling  down  a  monotonous  road 
in  life,  I  present  Christ  as  the  great  ener¬ 
gizer  and  dynamic  for  their  weak  wills.  We 

[164] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

hear  much  today  of  a  proper  education  of 
the  will.  Many  are  writing  to  efficiency  ex¬ 
perts  to  learn  the  secret  of  will  power ;  many 
have  adopted  the  doctrine  of  Affirmation, 
that  a  man  can  do  anything  that  he  wills 
to  do.  To  all  who  are  desiring  the  true  edu¬ 
cation  of  the  will,  I  commend  Christ  who 
alone  through  His  indwelling  Spirit  can 
quicken  your  dead  volitions  and  then  keep 
them  sustained  and  keyed  up  to  a  proper 
spiritual  and  moral  dynamic. 

Christ  is  able  to  sustain  our  entire  per¬ 
sonalities,  because  He  is  our  Abiding  Friend. 
We  are  persons  and  only  another  great  per¬ 
sonality  can  give  us  the  proper  strength  for 
life.  As  Augustine  said  in  the  long  ago, 
“Thou  hast  made  us  for  thyself,  and  our 
souls  are  restless  till  they  find  their  rest  in 
thee.”  Christ  is  the  best  friend  for  our  souls. 
When  Arthur  Henry  Hallan  died,  it  seemed 
that  the  soul  of  Tennyson  would  lapse  into 
skepticism.  He  tells  us  of  his  spiritual  strug¬ 
gles  and  final  victory  in  that  wonderful  poem, 
In  Memoriam.  In  section  49,  he  yearns  for 
the  spirit  of  his  dead  friend  to  strengthen 
him  in  life’s  trials.  I  would  apply  these 
verses  in  a  deeper  sense  to  our  Living  Friend 
who  is  with  us  at  all  times  to  uphold  and  to 
inspire.  Writes  the  poet: 

Be  near  me  when  my  light  is  low, 

When  the  blood  creeps,  and  the  nerves 
prick 

And  tingle ;  and  the  heart  is  sick, 

And  all  the  wheels  of  Being  slow. 

[165] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


Be  near  me  when  the  sensuous  frame 

Is  racked  with  pangs  that  conquer  trust; 
And  Time,  a  maniac  scattering  dust, 

And  Life,  a  Fury  slinging  flame. 

Be  near  me  when  my  faith  is  dry ; 

And  men  the  flies  of  latter  spring, 

That  lay  their  eggs,  and  sting  and  sing, 
And  weave  their  petty  cells  and  die. 

Be  near  me  when  I  fade  away, 

To  point  the  term  of  human  strife, 

And  on  the  low  dark  verge  of  life 
The  twilight  of  eternal  day. 

In  the  next  place,  I  would  note 

THE  ALL-SUFFICIENT  BOOK 

Of  course,  it  is  pre-eminently  true  that  the 
whole  Bible  is  admirably  suited  to  satisfy 
all  of  man’s  psychic  needs.  But  it  would  be 
impossible  to  show  in  detail  how  the  entire 
Bible  meets  man’s  psychological  demands. 
As  a  fit  illustration  of  the  adequacy  of  the 
whole  book,  I  am  going  to  outline  briefly, 
from  a  psychological  standpoint,  the  most 
psychological  book  of  the  entire  Scriptures, 
Paul’s  Epistle  to  the  Philippians.  I  would 
entitle  this,  “The  Power  of  a  Victorious  Per¬ 
sonality,  or  the  Triumph  Over  Evil  Circum¬ 
stances  Through  Possession  of  the  Mind  of 
Christ.” 

What  were  the  circumstances  over  which 
he  triumphed  so  gloriously?  It  was  likely 

[166] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  sixth  year  of  Nero’s  reign,  and  Paul  was 
a  prisoner  at  Rome.  That  monarch  had 
started  most  auspiciously  under  the  guidance 
of  his  wise  friends,  Seneca  and  Burrus.  But 
the  latent  ferocity  within  him  soon  came  to 
the  surface,  and  he  soon  started  on  his  wild 
orgy  of  debauchery,  arson,  and  murder.  In 
April,  59,  he  assassinated  his  own  mother 
Agrippina.  He  divorced  his  young  wife,  Oc- 
tavia,  and  married  his  mistress,  Poppaea. 
For  the  sake  of  his  mistress  he  had  his  wife 
beheaded,  and  her  head  brought  on  a  platter 
to  the  new  queen.  It  was  at  such  a  time  that 
Paul  was  a  prisoner  at  Rome.  Perhaps  some 
of  the  very  soldiers  who  attended  him  as  a 
prisoner  at  Rome,  and  to  whom  he  preached 
the  Gospel,  had  helped  to  assassinate  Agrip¬ 
pina  or  had  cut  off  the  head  of  Octavia.  How 
was  a  man  to  triumph  over  such  untoward 
circumstances?  The  solution  was  the  pos¬ 
session  on  his  part  of  the  Mind  of  Christ. 
By  the  Mind  of  Christ  Paul  did  not  mean  that 
obliterating  the  distinction  between  your 
mind  and  His  there  should  be  an  identity  of 
mind,  but  that  through  the  operation  of  His 
Spirit,  you  should  emulate  his  Character  and 
moral  disposition  in  the  midst  of  untoward 
circumstances. 

These  were  not  all  the  evil  circumstances 
over  which  Paul  triumphed.  In  addition 
there  was  the  bitter  hostility  on  the  part  of 
the  Jews  at  Rome  to  him  and  to  his  Gospel. 
Poppaea,  Nero’s  mistress,  was  a  Jewess,  and 
she  likely  incited  her  lord  and  master  to  per¬ 
secute  the  Christians. 

[167] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Timothy  had  joined  him  at  Rome,  and 
acted  as  his  amanuensis.  In  midsummer 
Epaphroditus  came  with  the  thoughtful  con¬ 
tribution  for  Paul’s  necessity  from  the  be¬ 
loved  church  at  Philippi.  When  he  returned, 
Paul  sent  to  the  church  that  choicest  Psy¬ 
chological  treatise  on  the  power  of  the  Gos¬ 
pel,  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians.  I  will 
outline  the  four  chapters  briefly. 

CHAPTER L 

TRIUMPH  OVER  ADVERSITY  THROUGH 
THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST 

Paul  is  telling  the  Philippians  of  his  per¬ 
sonal  sorrows  and  tribulations.  The  key 
verse  is  verse  20,  where  he  tells  them  that 
his  earnest  wish  in  it  all  is  that  Christ  shall 
be  magnified  in  his  body,  whether  it  be  by 
life  or  by  death.  He  relates  his  sufferings 
to  the  one  point,  “Does  it  magnify  Christ.” 
Perhaps  the  greatest  inspiration  of  new  cults 
throughout  the  ages  has  been  the  problem  of 
human  suffering.  Paul  would  say,  “Do  not 
deny  its  existence.  Acknowledge  it  as  a  fact, 
but  relate  it  to  a  still  greater  truth,  the  will¬ 
ingness  to  glorify  Jesus  in  everything.  Re¬ 
alize  that  in  the  light  of  the  glorious  truth  of 
the  power  resident  in  the  mind  of  Jesus,  that 
these  present  sufferings  are  of  slight  mo¬ 
ment  and  shall  soon  pass  away.”  How  much 
better  to  solve  the  problem  by  placing  it  be¬ 
side  the  still  grander  truth  of  the  supremacy 
of  the  mind  of  Jesus  in  all  the  relations  of 

[168] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

life,  than  to  stultify  the  consciousness  by  de¬ 
nying  that  pain  exists.  Our  age  needs  a  new 
understanding  of  the  philosophy  of  pain.  We 
need  to  learn  afresh  its  biological  function 
as  a  warning  that  there  is  a  wrong  adjust¬ 
ment  to  environment  and  that  tissue  is  being 
destroyed;  its  moral  value  as  a  developer  of 
strong  character ;  and  especially  its  spiritual 
meaning  as  a  penalty  for  sin,  and  a  method  of 
chastisement  for  God’s  children. 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST — THE  INSPIRA¬ 
TION  TO  LOWLY  SERVICE 

There  was  a  slight  dissention  in  the  be¬ 
loved  church.  Paul  would  cure  this  spiritual 
disease  by  bringing  to  bear  upon  it  the  pro- 
f oundest  motive  of  which  he  knew :  an  appeal 
to  cultivate  the  mind  of  Christ.  Making  use 
of  his  favorite  psychological  term  “mind,” 
he  asks  them  to  have  the  same  mind,  and 
especially  to  develop  within  their  souls  the 
mind  of  Jesus.  The  key  verse  is  verse  5, 
in  conjunction  with  the  following  six  verses, 
where  he  appeals  to  them  to  develop  this 
mind  of  Jesus.  It  is  the  apostle’s  wont,  as 
David  Smith  says  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of 
St.  Paul,  “to  invest  the  commonest  duties 
with  the  loftiest  sanctions.”  Thus  when  he 
would  stir  up  the  grace  of  liberality  in  the 
Corinthians  he  asks  them  in  II  Corin.  8:9  to 
remember  the  grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  who 
though  He  was  rich,  yet  for  our  sakes  be- 

[169] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

came  poor.  In  these  days  when  social  service 
is  being  stressed  as  never  before,  it  is  well 
to  remind  Christians  that  the  only  valid  mo¬ 
tive  and  genuine  inspiration  for  service  of 
mankind,  is  possession  of  the  mind  of  Jesus. 

In  this  chapter  he  refers  to  two  examples 
of  lowly  service  by  men  who  were  like 
“minded”  with  him.  There  is  Timothy, 
whom  he  hopes  to  send  to  Philippi  as  soon 
as  he  can  find  how  his  case  will  turn  out  at 
Rome.  Then  there  is  Epaphroditus,  who 
will  return  home  shortly  to  relieve  the 
anxiety  which  his  sickness  at  Rome  had  oc¬ 
casioned  them. 


CHAPTER  111. 

THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST— THE  ANTI¬ 
DOTE  OF  DOCTRINAL  VAGARIES 

The  Judaizers  had  followed  Paul  to  Rome. 
There  had  been  a  break  in  the  church  there 
over  the  old  problem  as  to  whether  the  basis 
of  the  Gospel  is  law  or  grace.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  possibly  an  outbreak  had 
taken  place  at  church,  where  Epaphroditus 
had  been  openly  assailed.  The  assault  had 
been  of  a  three-fold  nature:  Gentiles  had 
been  branded  as  uncircumcised  dogs ;  there 
was  an  attack  made  on  the  apostle’s  personal 
record;  and  it  was  charged  that  the  Gospel 
relaxed  moral  obligations.  After  showing 
that  these  legal  attainments  were  as  nothing 
in  comparison  with  the  mind  of  Christ,  Paul 

[170] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

shows  that  the  consummation  of  all  religion 
is  to  possess  this  super-eminence  of  the 
knowledge  of  Jesus.  The  key  verses  are  8, 
9  and  the  following.  To  know  within  our 
souls  the  inner  resurrection  power  of  this 
same  Jesus  and  the  fellowship  of  His  suf¬ 
ferings — in  other  words,  to  possess  the  mind 
of  Christ,  that  is  the  acme  of  all  religious 
endeavour.  The  acquisition  of  this  mind  in¬ 
sures  the  Christian  against  moral  and 
spiritual  stagnation,  for  it  will  spur  him  on 
to  press  toward  the  mark  for  the  prize  of 
the  high  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus.  He 
appeals  to  his  readers  to  be  thus  minded. 

In  these  days  when  modern  legalism  in 
the  form  of  Liberalism  boldly  asserts  that 
salvation  is  by  character,  it  is  well  for  us  to 
remember  that  the  consummation  of  the  Gos¬ 
pel  is  for  the  believer  to  acquire  the  mind  of 
Christ,  and  that  this  can  only  be  attained 
through  a  religion  that  is  essentially  super¬ 
natural.  In  the  doctrinal  controversies  of 
the  hour  it  is  well  for  Christians  to  endea¬ 
vour  at  all  times  to  manifest  the  mind  or 
disposition  of  Jesus. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST— ALL 
SUFFICIENT  FOR  THE 
SOUL’S  EVERY  NEED 

This  chapter  is  the  climax  of  an  epistle 
that  is  essentially  psychologic  in  its  nature. 
The  richness  and  depth  and  suggestiveness 
of  its  psychic  teachings  are  simply  amazing. 

[171] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Paul  shows  conclusively  how  the  Gospel  is 
sufficient  for  the  needs  of  the  soul  from  every 
conceivable  angle.  It  would  seem  that  he  has 
anticipated  nearly  every  modern  psychic 
heresy  and  new  cult  that  has  arisen  under 
pretense  of  supplying  some  need  of  human 
personality  that  the  simple  Gospel  does  not 
seem  to  furnish.  After  a  person  has  read  this 
chapter  from  a  psychic  standpoint,  I  believe 
that  he  will  realize  fully  that  the  Gospel  has 
met  completely  every  psychic  desire  of  the 
soul,  and  will  see  the  utter  folly  of  the  claim 
that  new  cults  and  philosophies  are  needed  to 
supplement  and  interpret  the  old  evangel. 
My  method  in  this  chapter  will  be  simply  to 
outline  the  answer  of  the  Gospel  to  the 
claims  of  ancient  and  modern  psychic  doc¬ 
trines. 

Verse  4.  The  Secret  of  Joy.  Paul  says 
that  the  source  of  our  rejoicing  should  be  in 
the  Lord.  Despite  the  protests  of  rigid  and 
austere  moralists,  it  is  still  true  that  the  quest 
of  joy  is  one  of  the  greatest  desires  of  man¬ 
kind.  The  inspiration  of  many  a  false  cult 
today  has  been  the  desire  to  furnish  abound¬ 
ing  happiness  to  mankind.  The  true  source 
of  joy  is  not  through  a  shallow  optimism  that 
asserts  that  all  is  well  even  when  there  is  no 
valid  foundation  for  this  claim,  nor  through 
some  forced  grin  that  the  muscles  of  the 
mouth  may  work  up  mechanically,  but  the 
fountain  head  of  all  abiding  happiness  is  in 
the  Lord. 


[172] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Verses  5-7.  The  Antidote  for  Christian 
Science.  Paul  exhorts  them  to  let  their 
“sweet  reasonableness”  be  known  unto  all 
men.  He  appeals  to  them  not  to  let  their 
minds  be  divided  and  torn  hither  and  yon  by 
worry,  but  to  take  all  their  requests  to  God. 
As  a  result  of  this  course  the  wondrous  peace 
of  God  will  act  as  a  sentinel  to  the  mind  to 
keep  out  care,  and  anxiety,  and  bitterness. 
To  all  Christians  who  are  prone  to  go  into 
Christian  Science  to  obtain  a  greater  peace 
and  calm  than  the  Simple  Gospel  can  afford, 
I  commend  a  study  of  these  verses,  indeed  of 
this  whole  epistle.  To  all  who  are  desirious 
of  solving  the  problem  of  pain  and  care,  I 
would  appeal  to  you  not  to  stultify  the  plain 
testimony  of  your  consciousness  and  run  the 
grave  risk  of  committing  intellectual  suicide 
by  denying  your  five  senses  when  they  report 
that  trouble  and  discord  exist.  As  a  sub¬ 
stitute  for  this  course,  I  would  appeal  to  you 
to  develop  a  calm  temper  of  mind,  and  not  to 
get  overly  excited,  but  to  take  your  worries 
to  the  Throne  of  Grace  and  to  cast  the  burden 
on  Him.  Having  done  that,  then  place  as  the 
censor  over  your  subconscious  mind,  of  which 
the  New  Psychologists  speak,  the  peace  of 
God  with  instructions  to  keep  out  anxiety, 
discord,  all  fretting  and  fuming  and  every 
inharmonious  note  in  life.  This  is  the  Chris¬ 
tian  substitute  for  Eddyism.  It  has  the  ad¬ 
vantage  over  that  cult  of  being  founded  on 
the  Gospel,  on  sound  common  sense,  on  a 


[173] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

sound  philosophy,  and  an  enduring  psy¬ 
chology. 

Verse  8.  The  Christian  Substitute  for 
New  Thought.  Paul  tells  them  that  in  re¬ 
gard  to  those  things  that  are  true,  honest, 
just,  pure,  lovely,  and  of  good  report — be 
such  your  treasure.  If  it  be  true  that  the 
thoughts  deposited  in  the  subconscious  mind 
tend  to  realize  themselves  and  tend  to  exer¬ 
cise  a  wondrous  influence  over  the  whole 
body,  then  assuredly  the  rich  thought  deposit 
of  which  Paul  speaks  here  should  furnish  a 
man  with  peace,  power,  and  plenty.  As¬ 
suredly  there  is  no  need  for  the  Christian  to 
embrace  New  Thought  to  avail  himself  of  the 
opportunity  to  mould  his  life  by  the  dynamic, 
creative  power  of  thoughts.  Christianity  is 
the  only  power  in  the  universe  that  can 
purify  corrupt  thoughts  and  create  lofty,  in¬ 
spiring  ones. 

Verses  11-12.  Secret  of  Contentment. 
Paul  tells  the  Philippians  that  while  he  ap¬ 
preciates  their  contribution,  that  he  does  not 
speak  of  want,  for  he  has  been  initiated  into 
the  secret  of  being  self-contained  and  mas¬ 
ter  of  his  own  soul  through  possession  of  the 
mind  of  Christ.  This  is  a  wondrous  secret, 
this  mystery  of  contentment,  one  for  which 
philosophers,  political  economists,  and  moral¬ 
ists  have  long  sought.  This  heavenly  con¬ 
tentment,  a  divine  gift  that  comes  only 
through  possession  of  the  mind  of  Christ,  is 
a  consummate  need  of  our  age.  Most  of  our 

[174] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

economic  dissatisfaction  is  due  to  the  vain 
attempts  to  secure  contentment  through 
things.  Most  of  our  unhappiness  in  the 
home,  as  a  recent  writer  has  well  pointed  out, 
is  due  to  phantasy-wishing  and  phantasy¬ 
chasing,  “to  crying  after  the  moon”  in  the 
sphere  of  romance.  The  modern  world  needs 
to  go  back  to  Philippians  and  to  learn  from 
Paul  the  secret  of  contentment. 

Verse  13.  Doctrine  of  Divine  Suggestion. 
The  advocates  of  auto-suggestion  say  that 
man  should  say  each  night  before  retiring, 
“Day  by  day,  in  every  way,  I  am  getting  bet¬ 
ter  and  better.”  If  you  wish  to  practice 
auto-suggestion,  I  would  suggest  that  instead 
of  this  much-used  formula  which  puts  at  your 
disposal  only  those  powers  that  are  resident 
within  you,  that  you  try  divine  suggestion 
and  repeat  to  your  subconscious  mind,  “I 
can  do  all  things  through  Christ  which 
strengtheneth  me.”  This  puts  at  your  dis¬ 
posal  all  of  the  omnipotent  power  of  God.  A 
life  lived  in  such  an  atmosphere  of  divine 
affirmation,  is  absolutely  certain  to  possess 
strength  for  every  eventuality,  and  to  be 
pre-eminently  successful. 

Verse  19.  True  Riches,  or  the  Cure  for 
Materialism.  Paul  tells  them  that  God  will 
supply  all  of  their  need  according  to  His 
riches  in  glory  in  Christ  Jesus.  The  man 
who  really  appropriates  that  is  the  truly  rich 
man.  To  deposit  that  truth  in  your  subcon¬ 
scious  minds  and  really  and  truly  to  live  by 

[175] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

it,  will  make  you  richer  than  if  you  had 
deposited  in  the  bank  all  of  the  stocks  and 
bonds  on  Wall  Street.  In  this  age  of  crass 
materialism,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  the 
true  basis  of  wealth  is  not  material,  but 
spiritual  values,  yes,  is  God  Himself. 


[176] 


Chapter  VIII. 


Some  Practical  Hints  from  Psychology 

THE  purpose  of  these  studies  is  to  be  both 
of  practical  and  theoretical  value.  In 
order  that  their  practicality  may  be  as¬ 
sured  I  am  incorporating  at  this  point  a  num¬ 
ber  of  simple  suggestions,  made  from  the 
psychological  standpoint,  for  the  help  of  the 
religious  worker.  These  will  be  partly  by 
way  of  recapitulation  and  partly  by  way  of 
inferences  and  corollaries  from  the  chapters 
that  have  preceded.  There  are  other  equally 
practical  suggestions  that  readily  might  be 
made.  It  is  my  hope  that  the  reader  of  this 
book  will  be  stimulated  to  jot  down  other 
feasible  suggestions  that  may  occur  to  him. 

(L) 

TRY  TO  OBTAIN  THE  VIEWPOINT 
(BOTH  EMOTIONAL  AND  INTEL¬ 
LECTUAL)  OF  THE  PERSON 
YOU  ARE  TRYING  TO 
INFLUENCE 

This  is  a  very  important  rule.  It  follows 
as  a  corollary  from  the  law  of  apperception 
according  to  which  the  mind  in  assimilating 
any  new  ideas  or  experiences  tends  to  inter¬ 
pret  them  in  terms  of  the  ideas  and  com¬ 
plexes  that  it  already  possess.  If  this  is  the 

[177] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

case,  then  if  we  are  trying  to  get  a  new  idea 
into  the  mind,  the  course  to  pursue  is  to 
endeavour  to  ascertain  something  of  the 
present  psychic  possessions  and  attitudes  of 
the  person  we  are  endeavouring  to  reach. 
The  wise  salesman  realizes  that  he  must  try 
to  get  a  sympathetic  point  of  contact  with 
the  person  he  is  trying  to  interest.  He  would 
never  think  of  rushing  into  a  store  and 
brusquely  asking  for  a  sale.  But  for  some 
unaccountable  reason  the  children  of  this 
world  are  wiser  in  their  methods  than  the 
children  of  light.  As  salesmen  of  the  most 
valuable  possessions  that  heaven  or  earth 
know,  we  are  not  half  so  diligent  in  attempt¬ 
ing  to  reach  a  point  of  contact  with  our  cus¬ 
tomers  as  are  the  business  men  of  the  world. 
Hicks,  in  his  Ten  Lessons  in  Personal  Evan¬ 
gelism,  well  remarks,  “There  is  an  approach 
to  each  individual.  The  worker  should  study 
the  individual  and  be  sure  he  is  right  and 
then  go  ahead.”  If  we  follow  this  rule,  it 
will  mean  that  we  will  discard  all  conven¬ 
tional,  standardized  methods  of  religious  ap¬ 
proach,  that  we  will  give  up  all  technical  and 
theological  terms  with  which  the  person  we 
are  trying  to  reach  is  not  acquainted,  that  we 
will  try  to  get  his  viewpoint  and  adopt  his 
vocabulary.  The  nearer  we  can  come  to  en¬ 
tering  his  mind,  to  getting  his  world  outlook, 
to  seeing  his  problems,  and  to  adopting  his 
vocabulary,  the  greater  will  be  our  chance  of 
success. 


[178] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

(ID 

DO  NOT  ARGUE 

There  is  a  certain  rapport  and  psychic 
sympathy  that  must  exist  between  a  speaker 
and  his  audience,  and  between  the  personal 
worker  and  the  person  he  is  endeavouring 
to  reach.  The  more  harmonious  and  unified 
is  this  action  the  greater  will  be  the  success 
of  the  speaker  or  the  religious  worker.  Now, 
when  this  is  broken,  the  efficiency  of  the  in¬ 
terview  is  at  once  lowered.  We  have  all  gone 
through  the  experience  of  having  a  person 
who  was  out  of  sympathy  with  our  message 
and  our  ideals  come  into  an  assembly,  and 
we  have  felt  at  once  that  the  unity  of  the 
psychic  rapport  was  broken.  Now  the  dan¬ 
ger  in  a  religious  argument  is  that  it  at  once 
sets  up  a  barrier  between  the  worker  and  the 
person  he  is  trying  to  reach,  and  tends  to 
destroy  this  unity  of  spirit  and  psychic  sym¬ 
pathy  that  should  exist  between  them.  When 
we  begin  to  argue  with  a  man,  at  once  he  is 
thrown  on  the  defensive,  throws  up  his  in¬ 
tellectual  fortifications,  and  prepares  to 
withstand  us  and  our  proposition.  Before 
we  can  win  him  to  our  position,  we  first  have 
to  overcome  this  state  of  psychic  warfare 
and  restore  a  psychic  rapport.  Experience 
must  have  convinced  us  all,  time  and  time 
again,  that  religious  arguments  accomplish 
nothing.  They  tend  only  to  cause  each  side 
to  dig  all  the  more  deeply  its  intellectual 
trenches,  and  to  fortify  all  the  more  strongly 

[179] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

its  positions  preparatory  for  another  assault. 
Continued  argument  is  fatal  to  effective  per¬ 
sonal  work.  A  religious  argument  with  the 
sinner  goes  on  the  false  assumption  that  his 
fundamental  error  is  in  his  mind.  In  reality 
sin  has  affected  his  whole  personality — in¬ 
tellect,  feelings,  and  will. 

(HI.) 

PRESENT  SCRIPTURE  CLEARLY  AND 

SIMPLY 

The  instrument  which  the  Holy  Spirit  uses 
in  the  conversion  of  a  sinner  is  the  word  of 
God.  The  writer  of  Hebrews  in  4:12  writes, 
“For  the  word  of  God  is  quick  and  powerful, 
and  sharper  than  any  two-edged  sword, 
piercing  even  to  the  dividing  asunder  of 
sword  and  spirit,  and  of  the  joints  and  mar¬ 
row,  and  is  a  discerner  of  the  thoughts  and 
intents  of  the  heart.”  In  Ephesians  6:17 
Paul  councils  the  efficient  warrior  to  take  the 
sword  of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the  word  of 
God. 

Personal  worker,  remember  that  the  most 
efficient  weapon  that  you  can  use  for  con¬ 
quering  sin  in  the  heart  of  your  patient,  is 
the  word  of  God.  Hold  fast  to  that.  Per¬ 
haps  as  I  was  presenting  above  the  folly  of 
religious  argument  you  were  about  to  ask 
this  question,  “If  I  am  not  to  argue,  how 
then  am  I  to  reach  his  religious  doubts  and 
personal  problems  and  to  overcome  his  diffi¬ 
culties?”  My  answer  to  this  question  is, 

[180] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

“Use  the  word  of  God.  It  will  be  much  more 
effective  in  overcoming  religious  doubt  and 
indifference  than  any  arguments,  however 
subtle  you  may  consider  them,  that  you  can 
possibly  present.  Furthermore,  the  carnal 
heart  at  least  has  great  respect  for  the  sword 
of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the  word  of  God.  But 
it  has  no  such  respect  for  your  personal  ar¬ 
guments  ;  and  it  may  make  remarks  that  will 
hurt  your  feelings.  When  anger  and  heat 
are  once  aroused,  then  your  ability  to  reach 
this  given  person  is  lost.,,  Hold,  then,  to  the 
word  of  God  as  your  weapon.  My  experi¬ 
ence  is  that  when  I  use  this  old  sword,  I  am 
treated  with  respect  and  do  efficient  work ; 
but  that  when  I  descend  to  the  use  of  carnal 
weapons,  such  as  personal  arguments  or  loud 
altercations,  that  my  usefulness  is  at  once 
crippled.  Study  the  scripture.  Have  a  verse 
on  the  end  of  your  tongue  that  will  meet 
every  objection  of  your  patient  and  every 
situation  that  may  arise.  Your  efficiency  as 
a  worker  will  largely  depend  on  your  ability 
to  quote  scripture  aptly  and  pointedly  and- 
simply  so  as  to  combat  every  error  of  Satan. 
The  use  of  the  Word  in  all  evangelistic  work 
means  that  the  conversion  will  be  based  on 
a  sound  psychology  of  religion  and  that  all 
danger  of  empty  emotionalism  and,  maudlin 
sentimentality  is  avoided.  The  use  of  the 
scripture  as  the  great  instrument  in  personal 
work  is  not  only  in  line  with  the  teachings  of 
the  Bible,  but  perfectly  in  accord  with  the 
tenets  of  a  sane  psychology  of  religion.  The 

[181] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


cognitive  side  of  a  man  should  be  reached 
first  before  the  emotional  or  the  volitional 
faculties ;  and  the  use  of  the  Truth  as  an  in¬ 
strument  of  conversion  insures  that  the 
proper  order  is  observed. 

(IV.) 

TRY  TO  REACH  HIS  EMOTIONAL  LIFE 

Modern  psychology  is  stressing  more  and 
more  the  importance  of  the  emotions.  Man 
is  more  than  a  cold,  intellectual  machine. 
Some  of  our  most  cherished  beliefs  and  con¬ 
victions  are  not  founded  on  the  conclusions 
of  pure  logic,  but  on  the  emotional  side  of 
our  being.  A  great  majority  of  our  likes 
and  dislikes,  our  desires  and  our  prejudices 
have  an  emotional  foundation.  Hence  in  all 
personal  work  it  is  very  essential  to  tie  on 
the  dormant  religious  strivings  of  the  pa¬ 
tient  to  some  great  emotional  complex  in  his 
life.  Try  to  make  a  contact  between  his 
present  emotional  life  and  love  to  God  or 
Christ.  It  may  be  that  through  his  love  for 
his  mother,  his  sense  of  honour  and  fair  play, 
his  love  for  his  child,  you  can  bridge  the  gulf 
between  his  present  state  of  indifference  and 
God.  Here  is  a  great  opportunity  for  us  to 
study  wisely  the  person  we  are  trying  to 
reach.  The  efficient  personal  worker  is  one 
who  can  find  some  emotional  attachment, 
some  tender  feeling  or  religious  association 
that  may  be  used  as  a  tender  thread  to  lead 
the  sinner  gradually  out  of  the  darkness  into 

[182] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  light.  It  may  be  some  tender  association, 
some  sweet  sentiment  that  the  world  would 
hardly  notice,  but  still  it  may  be  just  the  tiny 
bridge  that  will  lead  him  home  to  God.  Study 
well  the  temperament,  the  emotional  life,  the 
likes  and  dislikes  of  the  person  you  are  try¬ 
ing  to  bring  to  God. 


(V.) 

MAKE  ALL  YOUR  EFFORTS  TEND  TO 
A  CLEAR-CUT  DECISION 
OF  THE  WILL 

Do  not  be  satisfied  with  any  other  steps 
until  this  stage  is  reached.  The  sinner  may 
insist  that  his  mind  sees  the  truth  of  the 
Gospel  clearly,  and  he  may  shed  copious 
tears,  but  he  is  unwilling  at  this  time  to 
make  any  definite  stand  of  any  kind.  Do  not 
be  satisfied  for  him  to  stop  at  this  point. 
Mere  tears  or  good  intentions  will  not  suffice. 
Insist  on  some  clear-cut,  visible  decision  like 
going  down  the  aisle  or  confessing  Christ 
before  men.  Many  a  man  has  had  his  intel¬ 
lectual  doubts  removed,  and  has  shed  tears 
at  the  story  of  Jesus,  but  has  refused  to  sur¬ 
render  his  will  to  the  Christ,  and  has  died 
just  outside  the  promised  land.  William 
James  has  said  that  all  consciousness  is  mo¬ 
tor.  Whenever  we  receive  any  new  concept 
before  the  mind,  the  natural  attitude  is  for 
that  given  concept  to  lead  to  action  of  some 
kind.  So  it  should  be  with  the  greatest  con¬ 
cept  that  can  enter  the  soul — the  religious 

[183] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

one.  A  sane  psychology  teaches  that  it 
should  lead  to  some  definite,  normal  act  be¬ 
fore  men.  Experience  has  shown  that  the 
more  open  the  confession  the  sinner  makes 
before  men,  the  more  likely  he  is  to  lead  a 
useful  Christian  life.  I  have  received  very 
little  effective  service  out  of  those  Christians 
who,  like  Nicodemus,  came  to  Jesus  by  night. 
The  value  of  an  out-and-out,  definite  confes¬ 
sion  before  men  is  that  the  exercise  of  a 
strong  act  of  will  tends  in  a  retroactive  sort 
of  way  to  strengthen  one’s  intellectual  and 
emotional  attitude  towards  religion.  Then, 
too,  such  an  open  stand  becomes  in  memory 
a  great  objective  fact  to  which  our  religious 
life  is  anchored.  Associations  are  built 
about  that  great  step;  new  and  old  com¬ 
plexes  are  related  to  it.  In  the  great  strug¬ 
gle  with  the  world,  this  open  declaration  of 
our  allegiance  to  Jesus  before  men  will  ex¬ 
ercise  a  great  stabilizing  influence  on  our 
religious  faith  and  will  tend  to  keep  us  true 
to  Him.  It  is  a  sort  of  anchor  to  the  soul. 

(VI.) 

INSIST  ON  THE  CONVERTS  GOING 

TO  WORK 

After  you  have  won  the  sinner  to  Christ, 
then  the  next  step  is  to  put  him  to  work.  It 
is  bad  psychology  as  well  as  poor  religion  for 
a  man  to  confess  the  Saviour,  and  then  to 
be  permitted  to  drift  into  idleness.  There 
should  be  some  form  of  expressional  activity. 

[184] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

The  New  Psychology  is  insistent  that  the 
psychical  life  of  man  moves  in  a  regular  pro¬ 
cess  of  cognition,  affection  and  conation.  If 
this  is  the  natural  cycle  of  life,  then  every 
new  concept  that  comes  before  the  mind 
should  tend  to  issue  in  some  form  of  cona¬ 
tion  or  action.  If  it  does  not,  then  it  is  not 
a  normal  psychical  process.  Surely,  then, 
the  greatest  concept  that  can  possibly  enter 
the  mind  of  man,  the  religious  idea,  should 
take  issuance  in  definite  action  of  some  kind. 
The  first  few  days  after  the  sinner  has  made 
his  confession  are  critical  times  for  him.  He 
has  just  taken  a  great  step.  His  emotional 
life  is  aroused,  and  he  is  swayed  with  an 
ardent  love  for  His  Lord,  and  his  soul  is  full 
of  lofty  visions  and  high  ideals  of  service. 
His  will  is  charged  with  impulses  for  action. 
Shall  his  high  visions  and  bubbling  enthusi¬ 
asm  be  allowed  to  evaporate  into  maudlin 
sentimentalisms  and  empty  emotionalism? 
Shall  his  young  will  be  allowed  to  fall  nat¬ 
urally  into  the  rut  of  conventional,  common¬ 
place,  and  fruitless  Christianity?  It  all  de¬ 
pends  largely  on  the  care  that  is  bestowed 
upon  him  after  his  conversion.  If  a  wise 
pastor  and  diligent  leaders  give  him  some 
definite  work  to  do,  and  guide  his  newly 
aroused  religious  currents  into  useful  chan¬ 
nels  of  service,  then  he  will  likely  become  a 
strong  Christian.  Pastor,  religious  leader, 
watch  carefully  the  early  days  of  your  young 
convert’s  life.  Above  all  things  see  that  he 
is  directed  into  some  wise  channel  of  service. 
[185] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

(VII.) 

INSIST  THAT  HE  FORM  PROPER 
RELIGIOUS  HABITS 

I  am  convinced  more  and  more  that  the 
usefulness  of  the  average  Christian  depends 
largely  on  the  habits  that  he  has  formed, 
especially  in  his  youth.  The  practice  of  go¬ 
ing  to  church  services  and  prayer  meeting, 
of  giving  systematically  and  proportionately 
of  his  money  to  the  Lord,  of  reading  his  Bible 
and  praying  every  day — these  are  all  largely 
matters  of  religious  habit.  Christians  who 
have  given  up  these  good  practices  have  told 
me  that  when  other  habits  were  formed  it 
was  just  as  natural  to  work  on  Sunday  morn¬ 
ing,  to  neglect  to  give  anything  to  God,  and 
to  fail  to  read  the  scriptures  for  whole  weeks. 
Psychologists  tell  us  that  a  great  part  of  our 
normal  waking  life  is  determined  absolutely 
by  habit.  This  same  rule  applies  in  the  re¬ 
ligious  life.  Happy  is  that  man  whose  habits 
are  his  allies  rather  than  his  enemies.  The 
normal  Christian  life  of  many  people  is 
largely  a  matter  of  following  the  religious 
habits  they  formed  when  they  were  young. 
If  religious  habit  is  so  potent  in  the  religious 
life,  it  is  very  essential  that  the  young  con¬ 
vert  form  helpful  and  serviceable  ones. 
Youth  is  the  time  when  the  grooves  of  habit 
are  cut.  When  your  young  convert  has  made 
open  confession  and  has  been  put  to  work, 
then  impress  on  him  the  importance  of  form- 

[186] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

in g  proper  religious  habits,  especially  in  re¬ 
gard  to  such  vital  matters  as  church  attend¬ 
ance,  proportionate  giving  to  God,  and  regu¬ 
lar  Bible  study  and  prayer. 

(VIII.) 

TRY  TO  KEEP  HIM  IN  A  WHOLESOME 
SPIRITUAL  ENVIRONMENT 

The  young  convert  has  made  an  open  con¬ 
fession,  has  been  put  to  work,  is  forming 
proper  religious  habits.  What  next  shall  he 
do?  It  is  necessary  that  he  shall  associate 
with  those  of  kindred  religious  spirit,  that  he 
shall  keep  company  with  those  who  will  in¬ 
spire  rather  than  hinder  his  religious  de¬ 
velopment.  There  is  great  potency  in 
spiritual  enthusiasm.  No  religious  habit  is 
safe,  unless  it  is  enthusiastically  performed. 
No  virtue  is  sure  to  persist  unless  it  is  col¬ 
oured  with  enthusiasm.  In  the  matter  of 
the  Christian  life  it  is  very  essential  that  it 
be  initiated  with  as  strong  an  enthusiasm 
as  possible,  and  that  it  shall  be  given  a 
spiritual  momentum  that  will  overcome  the 
downward  drag  and  lukewarmness  of  a  lack¬ 
adaisical  old  world.  Hence  every  influence 
for  good  should  be  thrown  about  the  young 
Christian,  every  possible  incentive  for  ser¬ 
vice  should  be  applied.  Perhaps  the  wise 
teacher  will  keep  before  his  mind  helpful 
suggestions  as  to  his  power  through  Christ, 
the  certainty  of  victory  over  sin,  and  as  to 
the  new  life  that  is  his  in  such  abundance. 

[187] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Surely  helpful  suggestions  from  pastor  and 
Sunday  School  teacher  wisely  thrown  into  the 
mind  will  avail  much  at  this  stage  of  the 
Christian  life.  Then  there  is  the  power  of 
psychic  contagion,  the  power  for  good  that 
comes  from  a  crowd.  Insist  that  the  young 
convert  keep  in  the  company  of  good  people, 
that  he  be  active  in  some  definite  church 
work  and  get  the  inspiration  of  communion 
with  good  people. 

In  other  words,  bring  to  bear  on  the  will 
of  the  young  convert  every  good  impulse  that 
you  know,  put  into  his  mind  every  wise  and 
helpful  suggestion,  and  insist  that  in  the 
spiritual  warfare  he  call  to  his  side  every 
possible  ally  for  good  that  is  available.  So 
hedge  him  about  with  good,  wholesome,  and 
tonic  influences  that  he  cannot  fail. 

(IX.) 

ENCOURAGE  THE  PRACTICE  OF  OPEN 
DISCUSSION  OF  HIS  RELIGIOUS 
PROBLEMS  WITH  YOU 

Modern  psychologists  are  insisting  much 
on  the  danger  of  the  divided  personality. 
Especially  are  they  contending  that  it  is  dan¬ 
gerous  for  any  conflict  to  be  repressed  into 
the  unconscious  mind  where  it  will  drain  off 
psychic  energy,  and  from  which  it  may 
emerge  into  the  foreconscious  mind  at  a  time 
when  our  inhibitions  are  weak  and  disturb 
our  mental  and  moral  equilibrium.  There 
has  arisen  the  science  of  psycho-analysis, 

[188] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

which  makes  the  attempt  to  find  out  the  na¬ 
ture  of  these  dangerous  repressions  in  the 
unconscious  mind  and  how  they  may  by  open 
confession  be  given  relief.  How  shall  Chris¬ 
tianity  meet  the  challenge  of  psycho-analy¬ 
sis?  Now  this  doctrine  of  repressed  con¬ 
flicts  has  immense  significance  to  the  re¬ 
ligious  worker.  Sooner  or  later  the  young 
convert,  even  with  his  wise  habits  and 
spiritual  safeguards  about  him,  will  have  his 
troubles,  and  perhaps  his  secret  sins.  What 
shall  he  do  with  these?  Of  course,  he  can 
confess  them  to  his  God,  but  he  needs  to  talk 
them  over  with  others.  A  spiritual  conflict 
within  that  is  not  settled  harmoniously  will 
soon  lead  to  that  divided  self  with  its  lack 
of  harmony  of  which  James  speaks  in  his 
Varieties  of  Religious  Experience.  Now,  the 
Catholic  Church  has  its  open  confession  to 
the  priest.  This  is  based  on  a  false  theology; 
but  it  has  some  psychological  value  in  that  it 
allows  the  distressed  mind  to  confess  its  con¬ 
flicts  to  another  soul,  and  to  be  restored  to  a 
normal  equilibrium.  What  in  Protestantism 
shall  take  the  place  of  the  Confessional? 
Shall  we  go  back  to  Rome  as  W.  E.  Orchid 
argues  we  should  do  in  The  Finality  of 
Christ?  I  think  the  answer  is  to  be  found 
in  the  practice  of  utmost  confidence  and  can¬ 
dour  between  the  personal  worker  and  the 
new  convert. 


[189] 


Chapter  IX. 


The  Challenge 

AS  we  come  to  the  last  study  of  this  book, 
certain  conclusions  should  stand  out 
clearly  to  the  reader.  One  is  that  a 
sane  psychology  of  religion,  as  based  on  the 
great  evangelical  doctrines,  may  become  a 
most  useful  servant  to  the  Gospel.  It  pro¬ 
claims  in  no  uncertain  tones  that  the  religion 
of  our  Lord  is  amply  able  to  supply  all  of  the 
psychological  needs  of  man  without  recourse 
to  any  outside  cult.  The  study  of  the  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion  should  tend  to  make  us 
more  efficient  Christians,  and  all  the  more 
desirous  to  appropriate  the  great  heritage  of 
power  and  peace  that  is  ours  as  children  of 
God.  We  have  found  that  in  the  Gospel 
there  are  psychic  reserves  of  which  we  never 
dreamed  sufficient  for  our  personalities. 
Such  are  the  conclusions  that  we  have 
reached  in  regard  to  a  sane,  orthodox  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion.  What  shall  we  say  of 
the  tendency  of  the  New  Psychology,  and  of 
the  work  of  its  hand-maiden,  the  destructive 
wing  of  the  psychology  of  religion?  We  have 
seen  that  such  studies  would  strike  a  deadly 
blow  to  the  very  fundamentals  of  the  faith. 
Indeed  so  vehement  is  their  assault  on  the 
orthodox  lines  that  a  ringing  challenge  goes 
forth  for  all  orthodox  Christians  to  rally  to 
the  defense  of  the  historic  faith.  In  this 

[190] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 


final  study  I  wish  to  note  this  imperial  chal¬ 
lenge.  Let  us  consider: 

(D 

THE  CHALLENGE  TO  DEFEND  THE 
HISTORIC  DOCTRINE  OF  SIN 

If  there  is  one  characteristic  that,  from  a 
theological  standpoint,  differentiates  this 
age  from  other  periods  of  religious  thought 
and  activity,  it  is  this:  there  is  a  marked 
absence  of  the  sense  of  sin.  The  conviction 
of  sin  rests  very  lightly  on  this  present  gen¬ 
eration.  All  of  the  forces  of  our  modern 
thought  and  civilization  have  conspired  to 
destroy  this  ancient  theological  doctrine. 
Modern  literature,  current  philosophy, 
science,  the  New  Psychology,  and  even  the 
forces  of  liberal  theology  are  all  banded  to¬ 
gether  to  banish  from  the  field  of  thought 
and  religion  this  outworn  conception  of  our 
fathers.  Has  not  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  assured 
us  that  the  modern  world  is  gradually  get¬ 
ting  away  from  the  old  idea  of  sin.  The  New 
Psychology  would  destroy  entirely  the  his¬ 
toric  definition  of  iniquity.  It  would  define 
sin  as  an  abuse  or  misdirection  of  the  psychic 
energy  that  belongs  to  one  of  the  three  pri¬ 
mary  instincts — the  ego  or  self,  the  herd, 
and  the  sex.  There  is  quite  a  distance  from 
this  modern  definition  of  sin  to  the  old  his¬ 
toric  description  of  it,  as  any  want  of  con¬ 
formity  unto  or  transgression  of  the  law  of 
God.  I  firmly  believe  that  for  this  changed 

[191] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

attitude  towards  sin,  we  are  largely  indebted 
to  the  influence  of  the  New  Psychology  and 
its  staunch  ally,  naturalistic  evolution.  There 
are  two  reasons  why  the  tenets  of  the  new 
science  of  psychology  have  tended  to  under¬ 
mine  the  historic  view  of  iniquity. 

The  first  reason  is  because  there  has  been 
a  denial  of  the  doctrine  of  creation.  A  great 
part  of  the  validity  of  the  old  doctrine  of  sin 
undoubtedly  consisted  in  the  fact  that  man 
sustained  to  his  God  a  position  of  dependence 
that  naturally  and  inevitably  resulted  from 
his  being  a  created  being.  Since  God  is  the 
creator  of  man  in  His  own  image,  then  it 
logically  follows  that  He  is  absolute  sov¬ 
ereign  over  all  that  man  is  and  does.  Man 
then  becomes  over  his  life,  talents,  and  pos¬ 
sessions  only  a  steward  of  his  creator.  But 
suppose  that  the  conception  of  creation  in 
the  image  of  God  is  destroyed.  It  must  be 
evident  that  one  of  the  great  bulwarks  for 
the  orthodox  conception  of  God  has  collapsed. 

Liberal  thought  has  substituted  for  the 
notion  of  a  creative  God  that  of  an  immanent 
Deity.  God  did  not  as  a  transcendent  being 
create  man  in  His  image;  but  the  Deity  is 
an  immanent  Being  that  indwells  all  creation. 
Man  then  becomes  a  part  of  God,  and  is  es¬ 
sentially  divine.  Hence  if  he  has  God  within 
him,  it  is  absolutely  impossible  for  him  to 
sin.  The  old  notion  of  the  sovereignty  of 
God  over  His  creatures,  and  of  man’s  being 
only  a  steward  of  his  life  and  talents  has 
been  succeeded  by  the  modern  doctrine  of 

[192] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

the  potential  divinity  of  all  men.  The  cre¬ 
ated  being  can  no  longer  sin  by  denying  the 
sovereignty  of  the  Creator,  for  he  is  a  veri¬ 
table  part  of  God  Himself.  Thus  under  the 
influence  of  the  pantheism  of  the  New  Psy¬ 
chology,  we  have  gradually  lost  the  orthodox 
conception  of  sin. 

Of  course,  the  denial  of  the  creation  of 
man  in  the  divine  image  has  also  destroyed 
the  old  notion  of  the  fall  of  the  creature.  If 
man  was  not  constructed  a  being  perfect  in 
knowledge,  righteousness,  and  holiness,  and 
with  dominion  over  the  creatures,  but  is 
gradually  developing  upward  in  a  moral  and 
spiritual  sense,  then  the  notion  of  the  fall 
in  the  Garden  of  Eden  has  no  meaning.  Man 
is  still  in  the  process  of  attaining  the  perfect 
divine  image;  and  it  is  inconceivable  that  he 
had  it  at  some  remote  date  in  the  historic 
past.  The  only  doctrine  of  the  fall  that  the 
New  Psychology  recognizes  is  a  “fall  up¬ 
ward.” 

The  second  reason  for  the  denial  of  sin  is 
because  the  validity  and  oughtness  of  the 
moral  law  is  denied  today.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  perfect  law  of  God  based  on  His 
eternal  nature,  which  man  ought  to  obey. 
The  law  is  based  entirely  on  the  herd  instinct. 
It  is  a  creation  of  pure  expediency,  that  tends 
to  hold  society  together.  Conscience  as  a 
separate  faculty  of  man  that  can  issue  a 
moral  imperative  is  denied,  and  reduced  to  a 
mere  emotion.  Sin  is  not  against  the  nature 
of  God,  but  against  society.  McDougall  in 

[193] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

his  Social  Psychology  claims  that  moral  con¬ 
duct  and  social  conduct  are  synonymous.  It 
is  under  the  leadership  of  the  New  Psy¬ 
chology  that  the  liberal  theologians  have  be¬ 
gun  to  speak  much  of  the  social  nature  of 
sin.  The  essence  of  sin  with  them  is  not 
that  it  is  a  violation  of  God's  law,  but  that  is 
a  blow  struck  at  the  nature  of  society.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  their  version  of  the  story,  when 
the  prodigal  comes  to  himself  in  the  pig  sty, 
he  should  lament  not  that  he  has  sinned 
against  his  Father,  against  High  Heaven  and 
is  no  more  worthy  to  be  called  His  child,  but 
because  he  has  sinned  against  his  fellows  and 
against  society  in  general.  Sin  in  the  hands 
of  these  modern  teachers  has  been  evacuated 
of  all  theological  significance  and  has  been 
given  purely  a  social  value. 

It  follows  from  these  positions  that  I  have 
outlined  that  there  is  an  absolute  denial  of 
the  doctrine  of  total  depravity.  This  is  a 
relic  of  theological  barbarism.  Henry  C. 
Vedder  says  in  The  Fundamentals  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  that  total  depravity  is  a  doctrine 
that  is  opposed  to  the  fact  of  consciousness 
and  experience.  Thus  we  see  that  modern 
thought  is  a  bitter  enemy  to  the  old  doctrine 
that  man  comes  into  the  world  guilty  in 
the  sight  of  God  because  of  the  sin  of  the 
first  parents,  that  he  is  depraved  in  all  of  his 
faculties  by  iniquity,  and  that  he  is  unable  to 
work  out  his  own  salvation.  The  New  Psy¬ 
chology  teaches  that  man  comes  into  the 
world  with  both  good  and  evil  instincts,  and 

[194] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

that  through  education  he  must  develop  the 
good  ones  and  eradicate  the  bad  ones.  Since 
the  fall  of  man  is  denied,  the  modern  psy¬ 
chologist  would  have  no  logical  ground  for 
affirming  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity. 
Denying,  as  he  does,  that  man  is  created  in 
the  divine  image,  that  the  moral  law  has  any 
binding  obligation  on  him,  that  sin  is  against 
God  at  all,  he  is  perfectly  consistent  in  not 
believing  in  total  depravity.  The  tenets  of 
theology  are  so  closely  knit  together,  that 
when  the  original  premise  is  changed,  then 
the  whole  system  is  vitiated.  All  of  these 
heretical  positions  in  regard  to  sin  on  the 
part  of  the  New  Psychologist  follow  logically 
and  inevitably  from  the  original  position  that 
man  is  not  created  in  the  image  of  God. 

Sin,  to  the  New  Psychologist,  is  some  form 
of  psychic  abnormality.  It  is  a  case  for  the 
alienist  and  the  student  of  paranoia.  The 
sinner  should  be  pitied,  not  condemned.  He 
should  be  operated  on  for  some  lesion  in  the 
brain;  he  should  not  be  punished.  If  this 
position  is  true,  then  our  churches  should  be 
transformed  into  hospitals  where  defective 
brains  may  be  operated  upon  and  made  nor¬ 
mal.  Our  preachers  should  be  supplanted  by 
students  of  abnormal  psychology.  Against 
all  of  these  false  notions,  the  Christian  should 
proclaim,  in  clarion  tones,  that  sin  is  a  viola¬ 
tion  of  the  Holy  law  of  God,  and  that  it  is 
directed  primarily  against  His  nature  and  not 
against  society.  He  should  follow  in  the 
footsteps  of  Dr.  Benjamin  Breckenridge  War- 

[195] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

field.  Of  his  position  Dr.  Patton  in  The 
Princeton  Theological  Review  well  says,  “He 
believed  in  the  old-fashioned  doctrine  of  sin. 
To  criminologist,  alienists  and  students  of 
abnormal  psychology  he  left  the  task  of  ex¬ 
plaining  the  kleptomaniac  and  the  degen¬ 
erate.  He  had  no  cavil  against  the  claim 
that  such  abnormal  conduct  rests  on  a  phy¬ 
sical  basis,  and  he  had  no  objection  to  the 
word  paranoia.  But  his  studies  had  led  him 
to  attach  greater  importance  to  the  word 
hamartia.  The  normal  abnormalities  of 
mankind  were  to  him  matters  of  far  greater 
moment  than  the  exceptional  behaviour  to 
which  I  have  referred.  He  believed  in  the 
guilt  and  power  of  sin.” 

Another  grave  menace  in  the  present  psy¬ 
chological  attitude  to  sin  is  that  it  would  re¬ 
duce  all  evil  to  limitation.  Postulated  on  the 
pantheistic  view  of  the  world  it  holds  that 
the  only  sin  is  falling  short  of  divinity. 
Emerson  has  said  that  the  only  sin  is  limi¬ 
tation.  Gibson  in  The  Faith  that  Overcomes 
the  World  contends  that  the  essence  of  all 
evil  is  limitation.  Most  of  the  modern  here¬ 
sies,  whether  they  be  Christian  Science,  New 
Thought  or  Liberal  Theology,  unite  on  this 
platform  that  the  essence  of  sin  is  not  re¬ 
bellion  against  God’s  law,  but  is  limitation, 
and  that  salvation  is  not  through  the  cross, 
but  through  a  complete  realization  of  the 
forces  of  Divinity  naturally  resident  in  our 
souls. 


[196] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

“Know  this,  0  man,  sole  root  of  sin  in  thee 
Is  not  to  know  thine  own  divinity.” 

Such  is  Psychology’s  challenge  to  the  his¬ 
toric  doctrine  of  sin.  I  would  note  in  the 
next  place 

(ID 

THE  CHALLENGE  TO  DEFEND  THE 
DOCTRINE  OF  THE  SUPER¬ 
NATURAL 

If  there  is  one  theological  conception 
against  which  the  New  Psychology  is  even 
more  hostile  than  it  is  against  the  idea  of  sin, 
it  is  the  doctrine  of  the  supernatural.  The 
supernatural  has  absolutely  no  place  in  its 
philosophy  of  the  universe.  That  does  not 
mean  that  it  is  merely  opposed  to  a  miracle 
having  occurred  at  different  times  in  the  past, 
but  that  it  is  vehemently  against  the  notion 
that  at  any  time  the  Divine  Being  intervened 
in  the  world  process.  God’s  only  method  of 
operation  is,  as  an  immanent  Being,  to  work 
within  the  world  movement,  through  the  laws 
of  nature.  He  cannot  suspend  them,  or  act 
independently  of  them.  The  very  idea  of 
any  supernatural  interruption  at  any  point 
in  the  process  is  absolutely  foreign  to  the 
genius  of  the  New  Psychology  or  to  Natural¬ 
istic  Evolution.  Its  fundamental  thesis  is  the 
uniformity  of  natural  law.  If  it  were  to  ad¬ 
mit  the  supernatural  at  any  point  in  the  pro¬ 
cess,  then  its  whole  philosophy  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  would  be  jeopardized. 

[197] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

This  is  the  most  critical  attack  on  the  cita¬ 
del  of  evangelical  Christianity.  The  Gospel 
is  a  supernatural  religion,  or  it  is  nothing. 
The  whole  line  of  Gospel  Supernaturalism  is 
so  constructed  that  if  one  part  is  outflanked 
by  the  enemy,  one  redoubt  after  another  is 
endangered,  and  the  whole  line  is  imperiled. 
In  the  rest  of  this  study  I  will  show  that  as 
the  doctrine  of  the  supernatural  is  destroyed 
in  one  sphere  of  Christianity,  that  one  line 
after  another  is  weakened,  until  the  whole 
system  is  threatened.  The  chain  of  Gospel 
arguments  is  so  constructed  that  when  one 
link  in  the  supernatural  system  is  broken, 
others  are  weakened.  Let  us  note  how  the 
breaking  of  one  link  threatens  the  others. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  a  denial  of  any 
supernatural  creation.  We  have  already  no¬ 
ticed  this  position  at  some  length.  We  men¬ 
tion  it  here  only  because  it  is  the  first  step 
in  the  destruction  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
supernatural.  The  direct  action  of  God  is 
denied  at  the  very  first  of  the  world  process. 
This  is  the  first  step  by  which  a  man  leaves 
the  orthodox  line.  It  may  seem  a  compara¬ 
tively  simple  move,  but  it  is  in  the  wrong 
direction.  After  it  has  been  taken,  then 
logically  the  other  fundamental  positions  are 
denied  one  after  the  other.  The  other  de¬ 
nials  are  only  the  logical  and  natural  outcome 
of  ruling  God  out  of  the  process  right  at  the 
start.  These  other  positions  that  I  will  men¬ 
tion  follow  the  rejection  of  the  doctrine  of 
man’s  being  created  in  the  divine  image,  as 

[198] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

naturally  as  night  follows  day.  Since  the 
naturalist  has  ruled  God  out  right  at  the 
start,  he  must  surely  see  to  it  that  He  is  kept 
out  through  the  entire  development  of  re¬ 
ligion.  It  must  be  naturalistic  all  the  way. 

The  next  step  is  the  denial  of  any  super¬ 
natural  revelation.  The  Bible  becomes,  not 
the  record  of  God’s  inspired  message  to  men, 
but  of  man’s  ceaseless,  though  often  mis¬ 
taken,  strivings  in  the  course  of  evolution 
upward  to  God.  This  means  that  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible  is  im¬ 
periled  and  practically  destroyed.  One  of  the 
most  critical  attacks  made  on  the  Gospel  to¬ 
day  is  to  assault  the  basic  doctrine  of  Divine 
Inspiration.  The  Liberal  Theologians  have 
found  that  it  is  useless  to  deny  that  doctrines 
like  the  atonement  or  justification  by  faith 
are  taught  in  the  scriptures.  Their  method 
now  is  to  deny  that  any  of  the  writings  of 
the  New  Testament  save  the  words  of  Jesus 
are  inspired,  and  to  claim  that  the  teachings 
of  Paul  are  only  false  interpretations  of  the 
Master’s  words,  and  are  due  to  his  Rabbinical 
training,  and  to  the  theologic  and  philosophic 
ideas  that  were  “in  the  air”  at  that  time. 
By  this  method  the  critic  can  destroy  any 
doctrine  of  evangelical  Christianity.  He  has 
transferred  the  seat  of  authority  in  religion 
from  the  Bible  itself,  to  his  own  weird,  fan¬ 
tastic  subjectivism.  Man  will  believe  only 
that  in  the  Bible  which  he  wants  to  believe. 
In  his  own  breast  each  man  carries  about 
with  him  the  supreme  authority,  in  religious 

[199] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

matters,  in  his  own  predilections  and  wishes 
and  personal  whims.  It  is  needless  to  state 
that  this  means  that  in  the  sphere  of  religion 
there  is  no  final  authority,  but  that  each  man 
is  a  law  unto  himself.  We  are  caught  up  in 
the  endless  treadmill  of  subjectivism.  Such 
is  the  result  of  the  denial  of  the  historic  doc¬ 
trine  of  supernatural  revelation  and  divine 
inspiration. 

The  next  stage  in  the  assault  on  the  ortho¬ 
dox  line  is  the  denial  of  a  supernatural  atone¬ 
ment.  Having  cast  aside  the  historic  view 
of  Revelation  and  divine  inspiration,  the  lib¬ 
eral  thinker  is  now  in  position  to  accept  or 
reject  any  truth  of  the  Bible  according  to 
his  own  personal  whims  or  notions.  What 
could  be  more  natural  and  logical  than  to 
give  up  what  has  been  regarded  as  the  cen¬ 
tral  doctrine  of  the  Christian  system,  the 
vicarious  atonement  of  our  Lord  Jesus.  This 
gruesome  tenet  is  not  found  in  the  bright, 
simple  Gospel  of  Jesus,  but  is  a  product  of 
the  ingenious  brain  of  Paul.  It  was  con¬ 
cocted  under  the  influence  of  the  Messianic 
hopes  of  the  Jews,  his  rabbinical  training 
under  Gamaliel,  the  exalted  emphasis  on  the 
law  at  that  day,  the  sacrificial  system  of  the 
Hebrew  people,  and  as  an  illogical  deduction 
from  the  religious  experience  of  the  apostle. 
The  atonement  exerts  a  Moral  Influence  on 
men  and,  as  Henry  C.  Vedder  has  pointed  out 
in  his  recent  book,  is  intended  to  convince 
men  by  such  a  death  that  Jesus  is  indeed  the 
Messiah,  the  Saviour  of  men,  and  thus  to 

[200] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

draw  all  men  unto  Him.  Vedder  further 
claims  that  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement  is 
a  result  of  the  sacrificial  notions  which  the 
fraudulent  priestly  class  “palmed  off”  on 
the  people  of  that  day.  We  should  follow,  not 
the  priest,  but  the  prophet,  who  is  the  gen¬ 
uine  representative  of  the  Lord.  From  such 
conglomerate  sources  has  come  down  the  his¬ 
toric  doctrine  of  the  substitutionary  atone¬ 
ment  through  Paul,  to  Augustine,  to  Calvin, 
and  down  to  the  orthodox  churches  of  the 
present  day.  But  it  is  all  wrong.  The  task 
of  the  scholar  is  to  pierce  beneath  the  rub¬ 
bish  of  tradition,  and  to  ascertain  by  methods 
of  criticism  just  what  was  the  simple  teach¬ 
ing  of  Jesus.  He  will  find  that  the  center  of 
Christ’s  teachings  was  not  the  atonement, 
but  the  establishment  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God  on  earth.  Such  is  the  strange  position 
in  the  land  of  heterodoxy  which  the  student 
has  reached  logically  and  inevitably,  who 
first  took  the  wrong  step  on  the  perilous  road 
of  a  denial  of  the  supernatural.  The  very 
point  I  am  trying  to  make  is  that  the  tran¬ 
sition  from  one  rejection  of  supernaturalism 
in  the  sphere  of  salvation  to  another  has  been 
perfectly  natural,  once  he  denied  the  direct 
intervention  of  God  in  the  act  of  creation 
right  at  the  beginning  of  the  process. 

The  next  logical  step  is  the  rejection  of  a 
supernatural  salvation.  Henry  C.  Vedder 
says  in  The  Fundamentals  of  Christianity 
that  God  does  not  save  us  by  any  miracle, 
but  that  Salvation  must  be  won.  Since  the 

[201] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

liberal  theologian  has  rejected  the  foundation 
stone  of  the  orthodox  view  of  salvation,  the 
death  of  Christ,  it  is  incumbent  upon  him  to 
erect  another  basis  for  man’s  redemption. 
He  very  quickly  does  so,  and  announces  that 
salvation  is  by  character. 

About  the  year  409  A.  D.  there  came  to 
Rome  from  Britain  a  monk  by  the  name  of 
Pelagius.  He  did  the  very  laudable  work  of 
preaching  the  need  of  a  moral  reformation. 
When  men  asked  him  how  to  be  good,  he 
would  reply,  “Just  exercise  your  will-power, 
and  you  can  make  yourself  a  good,  virtuous 
man.  Your  will  has  not  been  hurt  by  the  sin 
of  Adam,  and  you  are  perfectly  able  to  save 
yourself  in  your  own  strength.”  He  created 
quite  a  sensation  in  religious  circles ;  and  won 
over  to  his  views,  Coelestine,  a  man  of  un¬ 
questioned  talent  and  ability,  and  others. 
But  his  views  were  not  long  permitted  to  re¬ 
main  unchallenged.  It  was  evident  to  all 
genuine,  evangelical  Christians  that  such  a 
position  was  utterly  hostile  to  the  orthodox 
belief  that  salvation  is  through  God’s  Grace 
alone.  The  foremost  protagonist  of  the 
evangelical  side  was  Saint  Augustine.  There 
were  some  bitter  theological  harangues,  some 
banishments,  excommunications,  and  some 
great  church  councils.  But  someone  will  ask, 
“Why  do  you  go  back  to  a  hoary  theological 
debate,  that  can  only  be  of  academic  interest 
to  us?”  But  I  claim  that  conflict  between 
the  Monk  Pelagius  and  the  church  Father 
Augustine  is  an  age-long  battle.  The  issue 

[202] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

is  just  this:  does  God  save  a  man,  or  does 
he  save  himself?  That  question  is  still  being 
debated;  and  will  be  until  man  goes  to  his 
long  home.  You  go  today  to  our  theological 
seminaries,  to  our  church  courts,  to  our  uni¬ 
versities  and  colleges,  to  our  separate  con¬ 
gregations,  and  even  to  our  mission  fields, 
and  there  you  will  still  find  Pelagius  and 
Augustine.  Each  one  of  us  has  to  take  his 
stand  as  a  follower  of  one  or  the  other. 

Let  us  keep  clearly  before  us  the  real  issue 
at  stake  between  the  forces  of  Orthodoxy  and 
Modernism  today.  In  the  heat  of  the  strug¬ 
gle  ofttimes  dust  clouds  of  prejudice  and 
hoary  tradition  are  thrown  up  by  both  parties 
that  tend  to  obfuscate  the  crux  of  the  prob¬ 
lem.  The  issue  is  clear-cut.  It  does  not  re¬ 
solve  itself  into  a  choice  between  special  cre¬ 
ation  and  so-called  Theistic  Evolution  as  a 
special  method  of  God’s  providence;  it  is  not 
concerned  primarily  with  the  critical  views 
as  to  the  date,  authorship,  and  historicity  of 
a  certain  book  of  the  Bible.  These  are  not 
the  main  lines  of  the  struggle.  The  issue  is 
this:  Naturalism  against  Supernaturalism. 
The  question  resolves  itself  into  this :  is  there 
a  transcendent  God,  and  a  transcendent  moral 
and  spiritual  order  above  the  marks  of  di¬ 
vinity  that  reveal  themselves  in  nature,  the 
soul  of  man,  and  the  mandates  of  society,  and 
has  this  Superior  Being  and  order  deigned 
through  Grace  alone  to  enter  this  present 
world  process  and  to  win  it  to  Himself?  This 
is  the  paramount  question  overshadowing  all 

[203] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

other  issues.  Of  course,  this  vital  question 
underlies  and  colours  many  present  day  dis¬ 
cussions  as  to  evolution,  higher  criticism,  the 
historicity  of  certain  books  of  the  Bible  and 
the  Virgin  Birth.  These  other  questions  are 
all  subsidiary  to  the  great  issue:  Naturalism 
against  Supernaturalism. 

Evangelical  religion  insists  that  God  saves 
a  man;  modem  Liberalism  holds  that  man 
saves  himself.  All  of  our  modern  heterodox 
creeds  agree  in  this,  that  all  that  is  necessary 
for  salvation  is  for  a  believer  to  come  to  the 
realization  of  the  divinity  within  him.  They 
may  differ  in  nomenclature,  in  many  sub¬ 
ordinate  doctrines,  in  certain  philosophical 
positions  that  each  emphasizes,  but  they  are 
one  in  this:  MAN  SAVES  HIMSELF.  As  E. 
L.  House  well  says  in  the  Psychology  of  Or¬ 
thodoxy,  “There  is  a  tremendous  movement 
today  to  regard  man  as  the  chief  agent  in 
his  own  salvation.”  A  recent  writer,  Gibson, 
in  The  Faith  that  Overcomes  the  World 
makes  the  suggestion  that  man  should  get 
out  of  his  subconscious  mind  the  idea  that 
he  is  a  miserable  sinner,  and  that  perhaps  if 
he  could  get  implanted  deeply  enough  the 
idea  of  immortality,  he  could  conquer  death 
by  his  own  mind.  There  is  a  wonderful  fas¬ 
cination  for  many  in  the  doctrine  of  auto¬ 
suggestion.  Undoubtedly  it  has  effected 
many  unusual  bodily  cures,  and  is  at  the  basis 
of  all  mental  healing.  Emile  Coue  claims 
that  by  auto-suggestion  a  man  may  reform 
his  moral  character.  What  shall  we  say  of 

[204] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

this  process  of  moral  reformation  by  auto¬ 
suggestion?  It  is  only  another  case  of  Pe- 
lagius.  It  reaches  the  fallacious  doctrine  that 
a  man  may  pull  himself  out  of  the  mire  of 
sin  by  his  own  boot  straps.  We  may  as  well 
talk  of  cleansing  the  foulness  of  a  city  sewer 
by  pumping  back  into  it  the  very  same  im¬ 
pure  water  and  filth  that  was  in  it,  as  to  talk 
of  a  man’s  reforming  his  sinful  heart  by 
pouring  into  it  his  own  thoughts.  He  needs 
thoughts  and  influences  that  come  to  him 
from  a  higher  source  than  his  own  wicked 
heart.  Thus  far  have  we  come  on  the  strange 
road  of  naturalism.  But  are  we  not  at  the 
end  of  it?  No,  to  change  the  figure,  there  is 
one  more  link  in  the  chain  of  salvation  to  be 
broken  before  we  fully  realize  the  havoc  that 
was  done  by  denying  the  fundamental  truth 
that  God  created  man  in  His  own  image. 

Finally,  I  would  note  that  there  is  a  de¬ 
nial  of  a  supernatural  Deity.  The  orthodox 
view  of  God  is  that  He  is  both  immanent  in 
the  world  and  also  transcendent  to  it.  Now 
the  liberals  assert  only  the  fact  of  the  in¬ 
dwelling  God  or  His  immanence.  He  is  in 
no  sense  above  the  world,  has  no  power  of 
acting  directly  on  the  world  process,  but  can 
operate  only  through  natural  law.  The  ques¬ 
tion  arises,  “If  God  has  His  hands  tied  by 
natural  law  in  the  carrying  out  of  His  plans, 
can  He  any  longer  be  regarded  as  a  free  per¬ 
sonal  Being?  Is  He  not  merely  synonymous 
with  the  forces  of  nature?”  I  firmly  believe 
that  with  the  denial  of  the  transcendence  of 

[205] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

God,  of  His  ability  to  intervene  directly  in 
the  world-process,  we  have  robbed  Him  of 
His  personality.  He  becomes  henceforth  only 
a  cosmic  force,  the  soul  of  the  world.  If  the 
old  idea  of  God  has  been  given  up,  then  it  is 
perfectly  natural  for  liberal  thinkers  to  sub¬ 
stitute  for  the  idea  of  the  Deity,  the  notion 
of  Society.  Society  with  its  laws  and  its 
claims  becomes  our  God.  This  is  a  perfectly 
logical  result  of  their  denial  of  the  super¬ 
natural.  Society  is  surely  a  more  tangible, 
more  vital,  more  real  entity  than  the  indefi¬ 
nite,  shadowy,  helpless  being  that  they  style 
the  “Immanent  God.”  Such  an  object  could 
exert  no  claims  and  demands  nothing  from 
man ;  whereas  society  has  rights  and  laws 
that  are  very  pressing.  We  violate  her  man¬ 
dates  and  owe  repentence  to  her.  Henry  C. 
Vedder  has  said  that  “God  is  Democracy.” 
Would  it  not  be  more  exact  to  state  that  the 
converse  of  this  is  true,  and  to  say,  “Democ¬ 
racy  is  our  God?”  Coe  in  a  Social  Theory  of 
Religious  Education,  speaks  of  the  Democ¬ 
racy  of  God,  and  of  the  Social  Idealism  of 
Jesus.  Writers  like  Ellwood  are  insisting 
that  we  reconstruct  religion  from  the  stand¬ 
point  of  the  all-importance  of  society.  De¬ 
mocracy  and  science  are  to  be  made  the  twin 
pillars  of  the  new  positive  religion  that  is  to 
be  divorced  from  all  creed,  from  all  tradition, 
and  from  all  supematuralism. 

Let  us  welcome  the  new  religion  of  hu¬ 
manity.  One  of  the  anomalies  of  modern 
thought  is  that  the  old  religion  of  Humanity 

[206] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

of  Auguste  Comte  is  being  revived.  This 
doctrine  went  the  way  of  all  flesh  forty  years 
ago.  Why  should  a  philosophical  corpse  be 
dragged  across  the  stage  of  thought?  Judg¬ 
ing  from  these  positions  we  need  not  be  sur¬ 
prised  if  in  the  modern  reconstruction  of  re¬ 
ligion,  the  old  notion  of  a  personal  God  is 
discarded,  and  in  its  place  is  put  the  more 
modern  concept  of  the  supremacy  and  tran¬ 
scendence  of  society. 

Such  is  the  havoc  that  the  forces  of  Nat¬ 
uralism  would  do  to  the  battle  line  of  the  his¬ 
toric  faith.  Salvation  in  its  eyes  can  be 
achieved  purely  through  natural  processes. 
But  I  would  ask  these  questions  of  liberalism, 
“Have  natural  processes  been  pre-eminently 
successful  in  bringing  peace  and  concord  to 
mankind?  Have  the  forces  resident  in  this 
old  world  been  sufficient  to  usher  in  that  per¬ 
fect  social  order,  that,  in  your  eyes,  is  the 
consummation  of  all  religion?”  To  a  man 
who  is  an  outside  observer  it  would  seem  that 
mankind  has  tried  the  forces  of  this  world, 
and  that  they  have  failed  to  bring  peace  and 
concord  to  this  war-torn,  sin-cursed  old 
world.  Ententes,  alliances,  militarism,  a 
league  of  nations,  disarmament  conferences 
surely  belong  to  the  natural  processes  of  the 
world,  and  they  have  failed  lamentably  to 
bring  in  the  social  millenium,  that  to  liberal 
thinkers  is  the  acme  of  all  religion.  The  real 
crux  of  the  matter  is  that  we  have  had  too 
much  of  purely  natural  processes,  and  of  an 
out-working  of  the  forces  resident  in  the 

[207] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

world-order.  The  natural  order  has  failed; 
and  we  need  a  supernatural  order,  one  that 
is  above  this  world,  with  different  laws,  dif¬ 
ferent  ideals,  different  motives,  a  different 
type  of  Deity,  and  a  different  salvation.  The 
clarion  call  of  the  hour  is  for  a  supernatural 
Gospel.  Prof.  J.  G.  Machen  in  a  recent  article 
in  the  Princeton  Review  said  that  our  modern 
world  is  largely  pagan.  Yes,  that  is  its  trou¬ 
ble.  It  is  distinctly  pagan  in  its  outlook ;  and 
the  sad  fact  is  that  it  does  not  realize  its  true 
condition,  and  is  vainly  trying  to  cure  its 
ills  by  an  appeal  to  the  very  forces  that  are 
supreme  in  this  world.  The  cure  for  pagan¬ 
ism  is  not  more  paganism  in  religion ;  but  for 
a  Gospel  that  belongs  to  another  and  a  higher 
world-order,  and  that  is  able  to  enter  this 
dying  old  world  and  to  regenerate  and  to  save 
it.  All  of  this  means  that  we  need  a  super¬ 
natural  Gospel.  The  evangel  of  naturalism 
has  failed.  During  the  French  Revolution  a 
crowd  of  thinkers  tried  to  get  up  a  religion — 
one  that  was  constructed  entirely  from  the 
elements  of  this  world.  For  some  reason 
their  new-fangled  religion  did  not  seem  to 
grip  the  people.  In  desperation  they  went  to 
the  statesman  Talleyrand,  and  asked  him 
what  the  trouble  was  and  what  they  should 
do  to  make  their  religion  powerful  with  men. 
The  subtle  diplomatist  replied,  “I  would  ad¬ 
vise  you  to  try  the  virtue  of  being  crucified 
and  rising  from  the  dead  on  the  third  day.” 
Methinks  that  is  the  very  counsel  that  our 
protagonists  of  modern  naturalism  need. 

[208] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

Their  religion  is  of  this  world,  and  of  this 
world  entirely.  It  lacks  the  dynamic,  the 
drawing  power  of  the  cross.  The  great 
Teacher  said  in  the  long  ago,  “And  I,  if  I 
belifted  up,  will  draw  all  men  unto  me.”  And 
modern  science,  and  liberal  theology  with  all 
its  wisdom  of  this  world  has  never  devised 
any  magnet  equal  to  the  cross.  It  alone,  as 
the  consummation  and  the  highest  embodi¬ 
ment  of  the  supernatural  Gospel,  is  the  su¬ 
preme  need  of  the  hour. 

The  battle  is  on.  The  issue  is  clear-cut. 
It  is  naturalism  versus  supernaturalism.  It 
is  Augustine  against  Pelagius.  It  is  the  doc¬ 
trine  that  God  saves  over  against  the  tenet 
that  man  is  able  to  redeem  himself.  The 
supreme  need  of  the  world  is  the  doctrine  of 
salvation  through  pure  Grace.  The  peculiar 
glory  of  Calvinism  is  that  it  accentuates  this 
doctrine  as  no  other  system  does.  Dr.  Benja¬ 
min  Breckenridge  Warfield  in  his  little  book 
on  the  significance  of  the  Westminister 
Standards  says,  “This  is  the  meaning  of  what 
we  call  the  Puritan  Conflict  which,  from  the 
theological  side,  was  nothing  else  than  the 
last  deadly  struggle  of  evangelical  religion — 
the  gospel  of  God’s  grace — to  preserve  itself 
pure  and  sweet  and  clean  in  the  midst  of  the 
most  insidious  attacks  which  could  be 
brought  against  it.”  If  we  would  take  part 
in  this  battle,  two  conditions  must  be  fulfilled. 
One  is  that  we  must  know  on  just  what  part 
of  the  line  the  crucial  battle  is  being  fought. 
It  would  be  folly  to  rush  at  this  critical  hour 

[209] 


Psychology’s  Challenge  to  Christianity 

to  the  defense  of  the  doctrine  of  the  mode  of 
Baptism,  when  in  reality  the  supreme  strug¬ 
gle  is  taking  place  around  that  redoubt  that 
guards  the  supernaturalness  of  the  Gospel. 
Then  knowing  where  the  critical  struggle  is 
taking  place,  the  individual  Christian  must 
be  properly  trained  and  must  have  suitable 
weapons  so  that  he  can  fight  the  good  fight 
of  faith.  That  each  Christian  may  know  the 
seriousness  of  the  issue,  and  that  he  may  be 
all  the  better  prepared  to  meet  psychology’s 
challenge  to  Christianity,  is  the  purpose  of 
this  little  book. 


[210] 


